In the recent posts I have talked about health care comparisons, and its current state in India. Now, let us take a look at how Health Care and quality of life has fared in China.

China is a unique country with almost 1.2b people being governed by a communist government which uses capitalistic instruments to steer and grow their economy. Health Care is a great example where the world can learn from China’s early successes. The goal to start out was to provide care to everyone and make the most use of the limited health care personnel. The focus was more on preventive care rather then curative and one of the stats which show that this really worked is that the life expectancy grew from 32 years in 1950 to 69 years in 1985.

The structure was deliberately chosen and designed to be three tiered one so as to make maximum use of the resources. The first tier was village medical centers to provide preventive and primary care services. They had an average of 2 doctors per 1000 people.

The next tier was the township health centers with mode advanced clinics and facilities but the doctors were not still highly qualified. These two tiers made up the complete rural health care system and was the backbone.

The final tier was the one in urban areas and was referred for the most seriously ill cases. Then there was District and Municipal hospitals which had more advanced professionals who could handle the most serious cases.

This system worked pretty effectively for a very long time but then the economy started growing once the markets were opened up and foreign investment started coming in. As part of the market reforms in 1978, Deng Xiaoping privatized large chunks of the health care system. The forces and decisions which made the high trajectory growth possible undermined the quality of care in the rural areas.

As the economy grew, people became more ambitious and wanted a better level of care so they started to bypass the first two rural tiers and started going to the doctors and hospitals in urban areas as they had to bear almost half of the cost. This led to the decline in number of the health care professionals serving the rural areas which in turn led to the overall decline and increasing prices.

The privatization brought in advanced technologies and new drugs but everything comes at a price and it was the same case here too where the inequalities in the distribution of the health care grew and though it is not at a verge of collapse, the situation mirrors the dilemma we all have in front of us?

What can we do to ensure that people start trusting the health care systems again? What can we do to empower the doctors and the patients and make sure that the focus is on the right parties and not insurers and health providers?

eZdia is trying to just do that. The focus and the intent is to provide a platform where the interaction between doctors and patients can happen in a secure and a safe manner without the intervention of the big companies.

The focus is to use the experience from the past and encourage people to use preventive medicine rather than going to a doctor after contracting an illness. The studies have shown that almost 60% of the illnesses and conditions could have been avoided if proper care and preventive measure have been taken earlier.

eZdia gives you a platform to do just that. The great thinkers and policy makers knew that to succeed and improve the health care for the masses, the focus has to be on creating a vibrant grass roots community where people have easy access to information and preventive measures. China and India from 1950’s to 1980’s are good examples that this worked before the privatization came along.

We will talk more on the details of how eZdia works in the next set of posts.

Lets start with some facts and slides on the current Healthcare market in India

Healthcare Infrastructure:

The Indian healthcare industry is growing at a rapid pace and is expected to become a US$280 billion industry by 2022. The Indian healthcare market is currently estimated at US$35 billion and is expected to reach over US$75 billion by 2012 and US$150 billion by 2017. According to the Investment Commission of India the healthcare sector has experienced phenomenal growth of 12 percent per annum in the last 4 years. Rising income levels, a growing elderly population, and increasing awareness are all factors that are driving this growth. In addition, changing demographics, disease profiles and the shift from chronic to lifestyle diseases in the country has led to increased spending on healthcare delivery.

Looking at the rise and the potential, people might be lulled into thinking that the quality of life is increasing at a rapid clip but what we forget is the size of the population and concentration of pockets of excellence.

Approximately one million people, mostly women and children, die in India each year due to inadequate healthcare. 700 million people have no access to specialist care and 80% of specialists live in urban areas. In addition to poor infrastructure India faces a shortage of trained medical personal especially in rural areas where access to care is altogether limited.

According to WHO statistics there are over 250 medical colleges in the modern system of medicine and over 400 in the Indian system of medicine and homeopathy (ISM&H). India produces over 250,000 doctors annually in the modern system of medicine and a similar number of ISM&H practitioners, nurses and para professionals.

India faces a huge need gap in terms of availability of number of hospital beds per 1000 population. With a world average of 3.96 hospital beds per 1000 population India stands just a little over 0.7 hospital beds per 1000 population. Moreover, India faces a shortage of doctors, nurses and paramedics that are needed to propel the growing healthcare industry.

As incomes rise and the number of available financing options in terms of health insurance policies increase, consumers become more and more engaged in making informed decisions about their health and are well aware of the costs associated with those decisions. In order to remain competitive, healthcare providers are now not only looking at improving operational efficiency but are also looking at ways of enhancing patient experience overall.

The overall figures might be telling a rosy story but the Devil is in the Details. The following charts show the story in numbers and drivers in the healthcare delivery.

Demand and Supply in India

Current Stats

Drivers in Healthcare

Demographics

Urban vs Rural

Major Players

Now that we have seen the details, how can we help as Indian Citizens and help in improving the quality of health care in a way which helps us and our fellow citizens.

Do we wait for the government to pass policy measure, make investments, and open up regulations? Do we wait for private individuals and organizations to open new hospitals, hire new doctors, or create new delivery mechanisms?

Cannot we do something which will help all of us in reaching our goal of universal health care faster and in a more effective manner?

We all tout about our technology prowess with some of the greatest minds in the various fields of technology. So, what happened to us? Why are we waiting for some one to take the baton and lead us?

We at ezdia have created a online democratic platform which will put the focus on the two major players in this whole arena Doctors and Patients. We have taken the whole focus away from this relationship which makes the high quality care possible. But, ezdia provides this access anywhere, anytime using the most flexible information sharing medium the world has ever seen. We don’t have to wait for physicians to go to rural areas once every three months, instead we can talk to the physicians of our choosing anywhere, anytime?

I will talk more about how ezdia works and how it will help you to resolve your problems and in the process increase the quality of care for the whole country, our country.

Today, everybody is talking about health care. Governments around the world are taking notice of the rising costs and dissatisfaction among their electorates with the current system.

So, why is this discussion going on and how can we “the common man” can help in creating a more robust and a flexible system in which everyone participates and contributes to the well being of their fellow beings?

The different models used in different countries are now being hotly discussed for their pros and cons but do we really know how the future will look like?

How do we really know what is good for us?

Let us try to compare some of the different models in practice today. We will then talk about how we as individuals can help in creating a healthy health care system which caters to people and not corporations.

Comparison by Countries:

The below table shows some comparative numbers by countries:

The comparison highlights some really interesting facts and shows us how to measure the current state of our health care systems and what we need to focus on for the future.

So, how do we make a decision as to what model is the best among these and is more effective? Does it really matter whether we chose one model among these and then apply it universally?

Shouldn’t we as individuals get the freedom to choose what works for us and then pay for the services we choose? Should it matter where are we getting the advice from? Should the government regulate how we choose our doctors, physicians, health care providers, insurers etc?

How Internet is changing the landscape and where we as individuals fit in.

Internet since its inception has changed the way people communicate with each other. It has opened the doors to the world and has shrunk the distances. There have been break through firms and business models like Amazon, EBay, LinkedIn, Facebook, MySpace etc which have changed the way how people do business with each other. It has leveled the playing field by reducing the barriers to entry and at the same time has fostered the culture of innovation by giving the freedom to individuals to get their ideas in front of the world any time, any where at no cost.

One such innovation is enabling Personal or Micro Sourcing on the internet platform. This is not a new concept by any stretch as it has been in practice since the Indus Valley, Mayans, and other older civilizations. It was one of the ways to facilitate local trade but till the advent of internet was practiced on a small scale.

Internet has given wings to the micro sourcing area by opening the access to the world at the touch of a button. I happen to know that a very good friend of my colleague at eZdia, Sachin is working on a research paper on this very topic to gain deeper insights on how people make decision on the internet and real life when it comes to trading at an individual level.

Now, let’s see what happens when we apply the micro sourcing phenomenon and the wisdom of crowds to the Health Care area. We know that the heath care systems today are broken, inefficient, and haven’t upgraded to meet the needs of today. We also know that governments have been trying for decades to overhaul the health care systems. But, changing complex systems, and bringing change is difficult, time consuming and incredibly frustrating.

So, how can we help to bring this change?

I talked earlier about breakthrough firms successfully using internet based models. Let us take a deeper look into some of these firms who have started to use the concept of micro sourcing and are providing the online platforms to facilitate this trade.

A comparison between these firms can be found on my very good friend and colleague, Vikas’s blog (http://referencedesigner.com/blog/tag/health/).

The idea is to provide information and freedom to people looking for advice at a minimal cost without encountering the hurdles of the bureaucratic health care systems. Take a peek at ezdia (www.ezdia.com) where you will find hundreds of registered experts and physicians by their areas of expertise. You can search for your question or search for the expert by area on ezdia and both of these ways will lead you to a live person regardless of where is he located. Once you have the expert identified, you can choose to talk to him live through chat or phone (this feature is coming soon in October’ 09) and pay only for the services you take.

This is not say that the formal health care systems will go away or vanish in thin air. They do have a great role to play from Pharmaceuticals to Health Insurance providers to Hospitals to Nurses to Doctors. But, at the same time we can and should leverage the wisdom of people and there are almost 4billion of us on this planet.

We need to get the information out on our effective practices, preventative measures, and common remedies. It is in all of our interests to help our fellow beings and at the same time online platforms like eZdia will help in ensuring that you are rewarded for your efforts.

In my next blog, I will focus on the health care systems in India, China and other developing countries.

Project Management Basics

I have been working with projects for big customers as well as our very own startup eZdia. What I have learnt over time and after missing countless deadlines is the fact that good intentions and good people do not guarantee a sucessfull execution. We need to plan and execute in a rigorous manner and managing a projects is a full time job.

Project Managers are the glue which keeps the various elements of the team together and focuses on the goal which is to meet the deadlines and deliver against the scope, time and cost of the agreed upon project. Here’s a short excerpt of the basics starting with the reason for failure and how to succeed based on our experiences and what experts have been discussing.

Introductory Concepts

Why do software projects fail?

1. People begin programming before they understand the problem. Everyone likes to feel that they’re making progress. When the team starts to code as soon as the project begins, they see immediate gains.When problems become more complex (as they always do!), the work gets bogged down. In the best case, a team that begins programming too soon will end up writing good software that solves the wrong problem.

2. The team has an unrealistic idea about how much work is involved. From far away, most complex problems seem simple to solve. Teams can commit to impossible deadlines by being overly optimistic and not thinking through the work. Few people realize the deadline is optimistic until it’s blown.

3. Defects are injected early but discovered late. Projects can address the wrong needs. Requirements can specify incorrect behavior. Design, architecture and code can be technically flawed. Test plans can miss functionality. The later these problems are found, the more likely they are to cause the project to fail

4. Programmers have poor habits – and they don’t feel accountable for their work. Programmers don’t have good control of their source code. Code written by one person is often difficult for another person to understand. Programmers don’t test their code, which makes diagnosing and fixing bugs more expensive
The team does not have a good sense of the overall health of the project.

5. Managers try to test quality into the software. Everyone assumes that the testers will catch all of the defects that were injected throughout the project. When testers look for defects, managers tell them they are wasting time. When testers find defects, programmers are antagonized because they feel that they are being personally criticized. When testers miss defects, everyone blames them for not being perfect.

Please vote for our ideas… Will be sharing the details for the two ideas soon..

SXSW 101: How Old is SXSW?

Well that all depends on which portion of SXSW you’re talking about. The SXSW Music Conference and Festival was launched in 1987.

In 1994, SXSW added the SXSW Film and Multimedia Conference to its lineup because of the growth of the film and tech industries in Austin. Just a year later, Multimedia grew into its own event and four years after that, in 1999, SXSW Multimedia became SXSW Interactive.

Over 23 years SXSW has grown in size and scope – from 700 SXSW Music attendees in 1987 to nearly 25,000 individuals from 50 countries for all three events in 2009. And it’s now an immersive day and night experience.

In short, SXSW is the best place to be every March if you’re interested in Music, Interactive Media, or Film.

Photo of Limpopo at SXSW ‘94 by Martha Grenon.

A fiction story by Anand Vayuvegula

It was a spring day in the foothills of the Himalayas with the air carrying the smell of newly blossomed flowers and the sound of chirping birds. The world was peaceful and prosperity was the order of the day. Some of the biggest and brightest dignitaries were enjoying the hospitality of the Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. US President Obama, Chinese President Hu Jintao, and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown were sitting in the lounge after dinner and talking about how the world came back from the brink of the economic disaster of 2009.

Suddenly, the sky went from bright orange to an eerie dark black color and everything came to a standstill. The heads of the four largest economies were shocked beyond belief and stood rooted to the ground.

A flash of light bolted across the sky and a voice announced that Earth was under attack and they had only 30 days to live. Everything was normal again but the four heads knew that it had only started. They had to do something before it was too late. So, they sat in the lounge smoking cigars and furiously discussing options but they could not think of anything or anyone to save from this unseen terror which was going to be unleashed in the next 30 days.

So, Manmohan suggested that they take a look at his favorite expert site eZdia and see if they can find some experts who can help them avert this calamity. They decide to give ezdia a shot and decided on the criteria they were looking for. The criteria were common sense, logical deduction powers, superior fighting skills, adventurous, ability to work with unknown devices, and an ability to fly among the stars.

They searched for experts using the criteria and came up with Chacha Choudhary, Sherlock Holmes, Bruce Lee, Indiana Jones, James Bond and Captain Kirk. The profiles for these individuals highlighted their credibility and versatility with high ratings. But, they wanted to learn more, so Manmohan suggested that they talk with these experts online on eZdia. After grilling these experts they finally decided to hire the experts, the mission being “Save the World in 30 days”.

More to follow………

Do Send in your comments and feedback.

Healthcare:

Some 47 million U.S. residents have no health insurance, and the numbers keep growing. Because employers increasingly are moving in the direction of providing Wal-Mart-style health coverage by shifting health care costs to employees, America’s workers struggle to pay higher premiums, deductibles and co-payments—if they can afford such coverage at all.

Of the 47 million Americans without health insurance, 8.7 million are children. Working families are experiencing double-digit increases in the costs of health insurance, more out-of-pocket costs for doctor visits and skyrocketing prices for prescriptions, forcing many to delay getting needed medical care or worse—to decline coverage for themselves or their families because of cost.

Health care costs are rising at five times the rate of inflation. According to the Center for Studying Health System Change, health care spending rose 10 percent in 2002 and that followed a slightly more than 10 percent increase in 2001—the largest jump in more than a decade. In the first six months of 2003, health spending rose another 8.5 percent. Premiums for employer-sponsored coverage increased nearly 13 percent in 2002. As employers refuse to pay their fair share, this trend may result in millions of workers losing their employer-based coverage.

The lack of quality health care in the United States also stems from our system’s lack of comprehensive quality measure and assurance programs, which unions now are establishing with community partners.

Our most successful public health insurance program, Medicare, is increasingly under attack at a time when the lack of access to health care is already a crisis in America. Most Americans ages 65 and older rely on Medicare, which serves more than 40 million beneficiaries in the United States.

eZdia’s Solution:

It is obvious that issues like Healthcare and Education need innovative solutions which can connect people and allow them to share their expertise and experiences across the country and possibly with their peers around the world. The lack of infrastructure and resources is no easy task to fill and so we need to use technologies like Internet and virtual real time communications to create a collaborative platform which will allow experts like physicians and teachers to learn, teach, connect, and share.

We at eZdia have a conceptualized product that allows people to find the relevant experts in their chosen area and enhances the probability of getting the expert advice at the right time. We have identified the key features based on primary research findings and this allows eZdia to connect people in a networked manner to find the answers they are looking for. Some of the main features are:

1. Expert association with content.
2. Instant recommendation and feedback.
3. Integrated connectivity with mobile devices and desktop widgets.
4. Seamless monetary transactions using open source API’s.
5. Robust Security features to ensure User Privacy.

eZdia will be providing these features through three core tools which are:

Knowledge Bucket:

Store the knowledge you want to learn and want share. Access that from anywhere. You define your own topics of interest & determine what you want to learn – eZdia does the rest. eZdia will provide personalized recommendations based upon the community you create.

Search Buddy:

Looking for help? Looking for solutions? Looking for contacts? Let Search Buddies help you find them. Search Buddies help you find experts to meet your own needs. Search Buddies bridge different communities. Search Buddies connect individuals with experts and ideas with expertise.

Expert Advice:

Looking for answers and solutions personalized for you? Why trust anyone when you can utilize the recommendations of your friends, colleagues, and network. Let trusted eZdia Experts find answers to your problems.

eZdia and HealthCare (Telemedicine)

Market:

Telemedicine is one of the more relevant to the average American as they face a scarcity of both hospitals and medical specialists.

The market for products and technologies used in the remote delivery of healthcare, from telemonitoring to telesurgery, is in a state of change in which a steady rate of technology development is progressively being adopted by healthcare providers and accepted by third party payers. According to a new report from MedMarket Diligence, this rate of development and adoption is driving a $243 million U.S. market for telemedicine products and services. “Healthcare providers — at all sites of service, including hospitals, health networks, physicians offices, clinics, homecare providers and others — are steadily adopting telemedicine applications as routine parts of healthcare delivery in the U.S.,” says Patrick Driscoll, President of MedMarket Diligence. “Combined with acceptance by third party payers, telemedicine is already, or is soon to be, a routine part of cardiology, dermatology, teleradiology, ENT, emergency medicine, gastroenterology, home care, neurology, oncology, ophthalmology, mental health, telerehabilitation, telepathology and eventually even telesurgery.”

The $243 million U.S. telemedicine market is split between teleconferencing equipment and services in telemedicine at $190 million and growing at 14% annually, and telemedicine equipment and services other than for teleconferencing at $53 million and growing at around 20% annually, according to the report from MedMarket Diligence.

Current Infrastructure:

1. Computer Hardware
2. Medical Devices: X-Ray digitizer/ scanner, Tele – pathology system, Tele – ECG system, Digital Stethoscope etc.
3. Video Conferencing System
4. Telemedicine software
5. Communication equipments
6. Integrators & Solution Providers.

We see companies creating solutions including hardware and software which form the telemedicine infrastructure. But, the focus at this time is still with the physician and the patient and is the first step in spreading the telemedicine.

We at eZdia believe that we need more than a dedicated link between the physician and the patient. We need to connect the different physicians and patients across the states and the country to enable the learning and sharing of information in real time as well as connecting experts and explorers through a single platform.

The Proposal

1. Create a single point of entry through eZdia and then have hospitals and physicians registered as experts on our secure site while we have patients register as explorers.
2. Patients can use the telemedicine equipments and choose which hospitals/ physician gets the diagnostic data to ensure privacy.
3. Patients can connect with friends/ colleagues in their network and other patients with similar symptoms to get recommendations on physicians.
4. Integrated connectivity using mobile devices, chat, and video chat to talk to physicians.
5. Seamless monetary transactions between patients and hospitals/ physicians for only the time used which reduces the cost of each transaction for patients.

Content association with experts allows people to search based on problems or experts and gives people an ability to make choices.

Feel Free to send in comments to:

Anand Vayuvegula

VP, Business Strategy

eZdia Inc.

July 4, 2009, Houston TX:

United States adopted the Declaration of Independence on July 4^th, 1776 declaring freedom from Great Britain’s rule. Fast forward to 233 years, on July 4^th, 2009 eZdia launches its Online Knowledge Platform declaring freedom from the inefficient ways people search for solutions and let others know who they really are.

Over 50% of people today are not completely satisfied with their current jobs (source: Gallup Polls) and more than half of them do not know how to let people know who they really are and what they are capable of. The industrial revolution brought in specialization and division of labor but in turn took away the personal relationships and collaborative ways to solve problems.

eZdia brings a unique way of combining the efficiencies of the specialization and the power of collaboration across geographies through its online platform where people can associate content and share their personalities and expertise with their friends, colleagues, and the world.

eZdia, with its patented algorithm allows users to showcase their capabilities across various areas. The Knowledge Bucket allows users to associate themselves with the content they like, they know about or they want to learn about. This simple but elegant approach creates a living document which shows who you really are.

Take the example of Alok (one of eZdia Co-founders), who is a Semiconductor Engineer by profession but who would have known that he is an also an entrepreneur with a zeal to change the world by changing the way people seek answers to their problems.

The Alpha Launch is the first step in eZdia’s journey to change the way people look at problems, the way they look at their primary professions and their passionate interests. This is not the end but just a promising start to an exciting journey which includes monetary transactions and work flow management in upcoming releases to let users manage their profiles and earn money by providing their expertise real time or off line.

Check out the Alpha version on www.ezdia.com and register your self to get to know the power of Content Association and how easy it is to manage your information using Knowledge Bucket.

Press Contacts:
Anand Vayuvegula,
VP Business strategy
Ezdia Inc.
anand.v@eZdia.com
(650) 387-3941

I am a Dreamer but I am not the only one – John Lennon

Some of the most famous personalities in the history have been people who dared to dream and worked diligently to achieve their goals. Some of the names I had been enamored with while I was growing up were Sardar Patel, JRD Tata, Dhirubhai Ambani, Narayanamurthy and lots of others. These were the visionaries who changed the course of history of a nation through their dreams, courage and hard work.

Sardar Patel’s vision brought together a motley collection of princely states into the largest democratic nation, JRD Tata created one of the biggest diversified manufacturing conglomerate while at the same time creating the base for the nation’s airlines, Dhirubhai created, perhaps the most enchanted story and the company ever in the history of the nation in terms of scale and vision, and Narayanamurthy, another legend in his own right changed the technology industry by creating one of the most vibrant technology services company. Then there are people like Bill Gates (Microsoft), Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard (HP), and Larry Page and Sergey Brin (Google) who have created visionary companies. Not to discount the fact there are countless small scale entrepreneurs who have contributed to keep the society vibrant and innovative.

So, what does differentiate these entrepreneurs from the common man? Why is it that most of us dream about creating something but only some of us actually go ahead with it? There have been countless books written by experts and experienced business professionals but do they really prepare us for the grueling life of creating a dream from the scratch? Countless courses and MBA programs train people in the art of entrepreneurship but what really drives them? We hear about the successful people but do we really think about countless other people who started down this path but have failed?

These were some of the questions we had when we started down this path of starting our very own firm. This blog is an attempt is to get our experiences down including the excitement, frustration, successes and failures.

eZdia is our dream which started from two people Alok and Deepak and their zeal to do something that impacts the lives of people in a positive way. So, they started out with different ideas on the table which then got refined further with the addition of three more members of the core team (Anand, Amit and Rahul). Thus, eZdia was born with the dream of creating The Knowledge marketplace for the people where everyone gets a platform to learn and share their expertise regardless of the physical location and time.

Now that we are close to the public launch of our online platform and in discussions with potential partners, I have tried to take those initial discussions, thought processes, countless nights executing on them and have put them down in this blog. The intent is not to pass judgment but share our experiences and also to get feedback and suggestions from all the people out there so that we can all come together and enrich all of our lives together.

Welcome to my Blog. I have been thinking for a long time to organize my thoughts, and discussions I have had when we started with eZdia last year and put them in a blog format so that we do not lose them to the travesty of time.

What you will see here is a snapshot of the last year through our (eZdia Team) lenses and our visiion of the future.

Do let me know your feedback, comments, suggestions.

Regards,

Anand Vayuvegula

VP, Business Strategy

eZdia Inc.