Center for Health Market Innovations (CHMI)

Programs

Hotline in Bhutan

last updated Nov 15, 2011

Overview

Implementing organization: 
Orange Business Services
Implementation Partner(s): 
The Royal Government of Bhutan, Regal Information Technology
Legal Status: 
Public-private partnership
Year Launched: 
2011
Stage: 
Pilot/startup stage
Income Level of Target Population: 
All income levels

Funding

Primary Source of Funding: 
Government

Technology

Technology Used: 
Phones › Voice
Technology Purpose: 
Extending Geographic Access
Summary: 

Orange Business Services of India has partnered with the Royal Government of Bhutan and Regal Technical Services to provide the people of Bhutan with a healthcare hotline number that is available for use 24/7 for every health problem from general advice to more emergent issues.

Program goals/rationale: 

Due to the hilly terrain of Bhutan, rural and remotely located communities take hours and sometimes days to reach a healthcare center. In addition to this, Bhutan was also facing health issues like shortage of doctors and healthcare professionals, growth of communicable diseases, shortage of health work force, burden of emerging and re-emerging diseases and inequitable access to health care.

The Ministry of Health (MoH) Bhutan is responsible for the health and well being of the people of Bhutan. One of their key objectives has been to increase the reach of modern medicines throughout the country. In their endeavor to provide medical services, MoH was facing challenges in round the clock and quick access to a healthcare system in the remote areas of the country. As a solution, they were looking for ICT enabled healthcare solutions to improve access to professional medical services.

Key program components: 

Orange Business Services, with its extensive experience in the healthcare domain won the contract for setting up of a contact center which will provide healthcare services to citizens all across Bhutan. The services of this call center will extend far beyond the existing health helpline / referral and emergency response services provided by the government. The new service aims to harmonize with the existing Bhutanese Healthcare system and will provided free of cost to the citizens of Bhutan.

To address the clients need we proposed a Health Help Center and Emergency Response Solution Services implemented by a 15 agent contact centre and operable 24x7. The contact center can be integrated with an application that takes care of logging and dispatching of incidents to the respective non- emergency and emergency agencies. The application will have a CTI integration and also be integrated with the vehicle tracking system. The vehicle tracking system i.e. GPS application will be able to track the location of the vehicle based on the call dispatched.

These services include readily available medical advice, health information and counseling services for the citizens of Bhutan. We have also added epidemic surveillance and reporting and an integrated disease management system as part of the services.

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