Open APIs could enable affordable healthcare for all

A TM Forum Catalyst proof of concept is showing how Open APIs can enable varied companies to work together in an ecosystem to deliver timely, high-quality, affordable healthcare at the ultimate scale – for everyone. The project is being demonstrated this week at Digital Transformation World.

According to a staggering statistic from the World Bank, half the world lacks access to essential health services – something many of us take for granted. The organization also calculates that there are 103 cellular subscriptions per 100 people globally – with many individuals owning multiple devices.

A new Catalyst called Enabling affordable and quality digital health ecosystem for more than 1 billion lives shows how ubiquitous access to connectivity can help to solve the lack of access to healthcare – “a digital answer to a real-world problem.” The project brings together healthcare companies and telecommunications providers to try to fill this gap with high-quality, affordable healthcare.

The major challenges with access to healthcare are typically cost and location. The Catalyst is demonstrating the use of TM Forum Open APIs to support a repeatable e-health framework where cost-effective, portable healthcare devices and larger traditional equipment, as well as remote consultations, are used to provide a variety of diagnostic tests. These range from vital signs to blood tests that can screen for all common health conditions, as well as more complex diagnostics like MRI and CT scans. Results are immediately available to patients via their mobile phones, and secure cloud technology enables users to access their digital records at any time and share with family and friends.

The team titled their project to reflect the fact that they are using India as a proving ground, since the country demonstrates the size of the challenge as well as the opportunity to make a huge impact – India has a population of over 1.3 billion people and only 25% have access to health services. Citizens in both urban and rural areas are affected.

What the doctor ordered

The Catalyst has two startups as its champions: HealthCubed and ICliniq. HealthCubed provides a portable medical device “the size of a shoe box” that offers inexpensive, safe and easy medical testing with real-time diagnostics. Tests can be administered in public health centers or in rural areas by a paramedic. The dream, says Steffen Roehn, Founder and CEO of Roehn Management Consulting and Senior Adviser at Reliance Jio, is ultimately for every family to have one in their home. Roehn also was recently appointed Chairman of TM Forum.

iCliniq is an online physician consultation platform where users can get medical advice from doctors from the comfort of their own home. Users can access medics securely either by posting a health query online or booking an appointment for a real-time, face-to-face consultation over video and phone.

Reliance Jio provides the connectivity backbone. Since launching in India in 2015, Jio has amassed over 300 million users in India and provides the largest 4G network in the country. As well as typical telco operations, Jio is focused on providing digital services. To enable healthcare-related digital services, Jio has launched JioHealthHub – a platform that provides “a complete primary healthcare solution in the palm of your hand.”

Roehn says the aims of the Catalyst dovetail with Jio’s goals:

“We purposely set out to cover all the rural areas and not to start, like all the other players, with only the rich people in the metro cities – we are going out to the common man in India,” he said. “That is important because that coverage gives us a platform to offer e-health services, via our digital channels, to those people who are most in need.”

Malaysian telco Axiata has extensive operations in Asia and joined the Catalyst to understand how such a solution could be rolled out in countries like Sri Lanka, Nepal and Bangladesh.

In the Catalyst, the participation of Philips, a big player in heavyweight, traditional diagnostic machinery such as MRI and CT scanners, shows how the ecosystem can work from regular screenings for common complaints through to complex diagnostics for serious illness. It also illustrates the relevance and application of this digital health model beyond India and into the Western world.

A rapid remedy

The team is using TM Forum’s Open APIs to support the integrations and interactions between the ecosystem partners. The Catalyst shows how the APIs have applications well beyond communications and can also be used in even more complex, critical and sensitive scenarios.

“The TM Forum Open APIs have traditionally been used in a telecoms environment – exchanging subscriber data and telecoms data, etc.,” said Ganesh Kathiresan, VP Digital Healthcare at Reliance. “We are showing that it’s possible to use these APIs in a healthcare environment – preserving safety, security and privacy etc. to enable an e-health framework.”

Because the e-health framework is based on TM Forum standards and Open APIs, it could ultimately be deployed anywhere in the world, Kathiresan said, noting: “Heavily redeploying TM Forum assets means other operators in Africa or Malaysia, for example, could easily just take it and integrate it within a matter of weeks – a maximum of a few months and not years. That’s the power of the TM Forum Open API framework.”

He adds: “I thought that we might have to make some tweaks to the TM Forum APIs or make some extensions – I did not think it was something that could work ‘out the box’. I was pleasantly surprised to see the way the APIs were constructed was fairly broad, enabling us to use them in a healthcare context, preserving security and privacy. We have demonstrated that APIs can be used in this health context and be fully compliant with all the rules, regulations and standards, without us having to make any changes.”

Unsharing data

As Kathiresan notes, privacy and security are of the essence in healthcare. Another interesting element of the Catalyst’s work is ‘secure sharing’. The team is showing how the APIs support giving patients ownership of their data, with the ability to control who it is shared with – for example, they can share records with a doctor for the duration of the consultation and ‘unshare’ them after.

This ‘unsharing’ capability will be an important contribution back to TM Forum’s API Program and could have applications in many different contexts in our increasingly privacy-sensitive world.

Right patient details every time

Further, the team is using the TM Forum Customer Management API to enable automated user identification using a QR code on the patient’s phone. This means users are identified correctly every time with zero mistakes.

Correct user identification is extremely important in healthcare. Manual processes and data entry at labs and health centers mean users are sometimes identified incorrectly with potentially devastating results. At best this is a breach of privacy; at worst it can have life-threatening effects on someone’s health.

Visit the Catalyst

The Catalyst team is already piloting its solution in selected locations in India, and early feedback is positive.

Attendees of Digital Transformation World can see the API-driven ecosystem in action and can undergo tests such as blood pressure, cholesterol, hemoglobin or blood sugar and get instant results on their phones.

If they opt to undergo multiple tests throughout the show’s duration, they will see a trend chart building and have the opportunity to share the information with an online doctor.



Learn more by watching this video filmed at Digital Transformation World 2019: