Page 116 - ITU KALEIDOSCOPE, ATLANTA 2019

2019 ITU Kaleidoscope Academic Conference

Stack can be understood as a set of APIs and systems that countries for shaping its healthcare services to be more
allow various stakeholders including governments, inclusive [5].
businesses, developers, etc. to utilize this digital
infrastructure towards achievement of common goals. At present, emerging technologies such as Internet of things
Creation of a stack on any vertical at a national level would (IoT), artificial intelligence (AI) and others are being
enable paperless, cashless and presence-less secure access to employed to design disruptive health innovations so that
the system. Such a holistic approach fosters innovation in quality healthcare may be accessible to a larger population.
service delivery. Literature is replete with application of wireless technology
almost two decades ago in the area of telemedicine in select
In the present scenario, the data that is needed to build “One countries of Europe including Athens (Greece), Cyprus, Italy
Public Healthcare System” is available in standalone systems, and Sweden [6] and the use of artificial intelligence and
only some of which are connected. The most notable artificial neural networks (ANNs) for maintaining and
attribute of PH is that it aims to widen the health system goals analyzing electronic health records (EHRs) by University of
from the one that is narrowly focused on curing diseases in California and University of Chicago for a period ranging
hospitals by health professionals, to a system that is focused from the year 2009 till 2016 [7]. Even in developing
on keeping populations/communities healthy by providing countries, drones are assisting in providing medicines and
advance information to stakeholders. Therefore, for medical aid in difficult and inaccessible areas of India [8].
improving the PH scenario in a developing country like India, The wearable devices are being popularly used to provide
an integrated knowledge management system (KMS) that remote and continuous monitoring of each heartbeat,
could interconnect the standalone, existing healthcare moment-to-moment blood pressure, oxygen concentration in
applications/other related applications into a holistic blood, body temperature, level of glucose, human activities
integrated national health stack (stack is a data structure used and emotions [9]. IoT-based solutions have the potential to
to store a collection of objects) by employing information reduce the required time for remote health provision and
communication technologies (ICTs) will go a long way in increase the quality of care by reducing costs with enriched
achieving PH goals. user experience. Similarly, robotics process automation
(RPA)-based bots can ‘advise’ primary care patients;
The aim of the present study is to propose a conceptual machine learning (ML)-based systems can help to identify
design and an actionable implementation strategy for diseases early that indeed constitutes an important step
building a KMS, referred to as a national health stack (NHS). towards preventive healthcare [10]. The National Health
Introduction of the paper establishes the ‘multidisciplinary’ Service (NHS), UK is planning to extensively harness the
and ‘preventive’ nature of PH. This is followed by a ‘Review potential of AI to make 30 million outpatient visits
of Literature’,section 2, on core subject areas viz. ICT and unnecessary so that the resources saved can be used for
KMS implementation in the health domain of various frontline care [11].
countries, with special reference to emerging technologies,
PH and best practices related to the subject under However, apart from these various ways in which the
consideration. Section 3 examines the national health advances in communication technology, computing, storage,
scenario of India with special reference to its policies on analytics etc. are helping in achieving the health goals, ICT
information systems pertaining to ICT implementation in can also play a more fundamental role. ICT can be used to
health, the current status and future vision. Once both the link the different sources of data, collate the information
theoretical propositions as well as the ground reality of the available, provide tools for analysis and make it available to
Indian health ecosystem have been elucidated, the paper the stakeholders for predictive analysis. Knowledge
moves on to state the goal, objectives and design of the management (KM) of this data pertaining to different aspects
proposed conceptual model,section 4: Proposed Conceptual of healthcare would help to provide deeper insights into the
Model of NHS. The implementation strategy is described in various aspects of organizational learning and community
the subsequent section, section 5: Implementation of the wellbeing, as indicated subsequently.
Proposed Model), followed by ‘Issues and Opportunities’ in
section 6, and‘Conclusion’ insection 7. 2.2 Applying principles of knowledge management
(KM) in public health
2. REVIEW OF LITERATURE
Knowledge management (KM) refers to a multidisciplinary
2.1 Application of ICT in health sector process of creating, sharing, using and managing the
information from different systems for achieving
Rapid proliferation of ICTs has catalyzed its application in organizational objectives. ICT can provide knowledge
the health domain since the 1990s by implementation of discovery through integrated data mining of health data that
mobile collaboration technologies, hospital management is provided by heterogeneous sources. With special reference
systems, online patient information systems, and so on to developing countries, Blayaet al., (2010) assert health
[4].Several related challenges including, but not limited to, solutions that emanate from well-designed ICT-based KMS
infrastructure concerns that are more often sighted in in resource-poor environments have a tangible impact on the
developing countries like India, did not deter researchers quality of health care [12].
from examining the merits of employing ICTs in these

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