Intelehealth
Model & Strategy
Health care systems fail to provide affordable, reliable, and accessible health care services to rural populations across the globe. At least half of the world’s population lacks access to essential health services. In India, 72% of the population lives without access to adequate healthcare.
Intelehealth’s solution is a software product that enables health organizations to set up high quality care programs in challenging, low-bandwidth environments. While most telehealth solutions link the patient and doctor, Intelehealth links a last-mile health worker such as a community health worker, and a doctor. Intelehealth’s app supports frontline workers in two ways:
Digital assistant: An automated, mobile phone-based assistant called Ayu guides frontline workers through history-taking protocols for 80+ conditions and basic physical exams for 140+ conditions (~70% of primary health conditions). History taking in other available teleconsultation models is routinely rushed or incomplete, which contributes to diagnostic errors in a teleconsult. Ayu is designed to overcome these gaps. Ayu also provides interactive aids for the physical exam. The output is a history note that provides a starting point for a remote doctor.
Remote consultation: If the health worker requires extra support to establish a diagnosis or treatment plan, they can connect to a doctor remotely. This doctor is staffed by the partner organization that has deployed Intelehealth.
Intelehealth works through partnerships with government entities and NGOs that reach thousands of rural patients. Intehealth brings the technical expertise and understanding of the field to add distinctive value in implementing telemedicine rurally.
Neha Verma hails from India, where she studied biomedical engineering and co-founded a company bringing cutting-edge dental technologies to India. She incubated Intelehealth at Johns Hopkins as a Global Health Innovation fellow from 2015-16; her advisor serves as board chair. She completed her Masters in Applied Health Sciences Informatics at Johns Hopkins and holds a Ph.D. in the same program. She is a full-time founder of Intelehealth and has attracted support from Indian organizations such as N/Core (part of The/Nudge Foundation in DRK’s portfolio), and US organizations such as Mulago and Fast Forward. Neha is fiercely committed to rural communities and to scaling Intelehealth’s impact.
Impact
5.3 million+ population covered
197,000+ consultations provided
1,897 health workers trained
608 doctors supported
25,000 training hours provided