GE Healthcare, an arm of US-based General Electric, plans to revolutionise rural health services in countries like India and Bangladesh "the same way as cellphones did", a senior company executive said today.
In India, the GEHC is working with the Neonatal Intensive Care and Emergencies (NICE) at Andhra Pradesh and Manipal Medical institute in Karnataka on cardiac care, but it wants to give more focus on maternal health, Omar Ishrak, President and CEO of GEHC clinical systems, said.
"GE wanted to enter into rural healthcare in a big way and revolutionise in the same way as cell phones did. We have embarked on several programmes in Bangladesh and India especially on maternal care," he said at the 94th Radiological Society of North America (RSNA-2008) which ended here today.
In Bangladesh, the GEHC is also taking help of microfinancing programme of Nobel laureate Mohammad Yunus and his Grameen Bank. "If we succeed in the maternal care in Grameen health programme, we can translate that to cardiac care and other ailments," he said.
Health experts from across the world opined at the conference that investing in education and empowering rural population with information about healthcare would go a long way in solving the challenges in rural health care.
Rural healthcare remains a big challenge in most of the Asian countries and besides the accessibility it was the lack of affordability and information which make the delivery of healthcare more difficult in these countries, they said.
