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Call Center Solution for Health Care (HC) in Bangladesh Introduction: Bangladesh is a small country but its have the large number of population. The large number people need health facility but in our country, the number of doctors is insufficient. So in my proposal, I emphasis on accurate health care consultancy in Bangladesh through mobile operator over call center. Doctor to population ratio – 1:4719.Nurse to population ratio – 1:8226.Total hospital beds-40,773(over 29000in GOB)

History and Govt. Policy:

Since independence more than 30 years ago, the Government of Bangladesh has invested substantially in the institutionalization and strengthening of health with special attention to rural areas, and the government is committed to HFA with PHC as the key approach. For the last 30 years, there has been a substantial improvement in the health status of the people. Life expectancy at birth has increased to 64.9 (2002), CDR has declined to 5.9 (2003), and TFR reduced from 6.34 (1975) to 3.0 (2004) (Sample and Vital Registration System, and Bangladesh Demographic and Health Survey 2004). The quality of life of the general population is still very low. The government is aware of this situation and the major shortcomings that need to be addressed, i.e., the development of an efficient project management mechanism across the health system. Improvement in the logistics of drug supplies and equipment to health facilities at district and lower levels; improvement in the production and quality of human resources for health.

Govt. Futures Vision: The government has formulated a perspective plan keeping in view the needs of the health sector for the future. The formulation of a national health policy would provide strategy directives on major health issues. The future vision for the health sector would include universal access to basic healthcare and services of acceptable quality

Md.Akramul Huq Chowdhury ID: 061779056, ETE-605

E-mail:akramulhuq@gmail.com North South University, Dhaka

Date: April 14, 2008 Submitted to: Dr. Mashiur Rahman

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Govt. Proposed Strategies: The Health and Population Sector Strategy (HPSS) introduced in 1998, which forms the basis for the future national health policy, is based on several key principles: greater orientation to client needs, especially those of women, improved quality, efficiency and equity of government health services.

Objectives:

• Enable the medical experts to take control of a remote medical emergency when required. • The remote health care system should be designed for easy portability

• The health care solution should be cost effective requiring minimal

training, installation and maintenance

• The health care equipment used should use an optimum bandwidth for data communication.

Need for Health care: “Emergency Medical Care is designed to overcome the factors most commonly implicated in preventable mortality, such as delays in seeking care, access to health facility and provision of adequate care at the facility.” (WHO (2002) [1]

• Non availability of facilities locally • Emergency at night • Non availability of appropriate skills • Technology locally • Travel

The places where the medical facilities is not available there health care team can provide this facility and they can get the advice of one or more skilled doctors with the help of high technology from these places. Therefore, there is no need of unnecessary traveling for doctors. [7]

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Health care Ensures Delivery of:

• Right medical advice • At the Right place • At the Right time

Health care can ensure the better medical advice for the people at right place and tight time. People can get better treatment from any place and in any time. Golden Hour: The people of Bangladesh want these facilities always. Therefore, it is the right time to provide them health care. Need for Health care in Bangladesh:

• Huge population (above 140 Million) with inequitable distribution of resources

• 70% of Bangladesh’s populations live in rural areas whereas 75% of

qualified consultants practice in urban centers

• Vast land area with difficult / inaccessible terrain

• Seasonal isolation of some tracts of land e.g. due to floods, snow, etc The people of Bangladesh are divided in to two parts, one part is urban people another is rural people. The urban people are enjoining all the facilities of city life but the people of remote areas are not getting these facilities. By health care, they can get the health care facilities as better as cities people can. The health sector of this country will more strong. In addition, it can help to make a develop nation. Most of the people of this counter live in rural area but the maximum number of specialist doctor is living in urban. There are some areas where people can’t go easily and can’t go in other part of the country easily also. Health care can help those people who can travel. It can be use in flood when the people became stiff and can’t find any doctor to help them immediately.

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Advantages of HC:

• Makes expertise available - anywhere • Early institution of appropriate treatment • Decrease need for transfers • Effective utilization of transports • Saves costs to patient, provider, system • Post Treatment follows up

Proposed Call Center Solution for health care in Bangladesh: What is Call Center? Call Center means at that premises the agent received the call from client and help, advice to the caller their appropriate problem.

Figure: 1 Call center solution technical diagram

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Technical Aspect of Proposed Health Care Call Center: My designed proposal performs entered in the mobile phone operator premises. First, we have to configure a short code in the MSC. In call center suite, we have an IVR (interactive voice response). In IVR, we stored 50 common diseases advice if any one call to our call center then he or she can listen those audio.

Figure: 2 proposed call center diagram

Here we configure a short core in MSC. When a user calls 25726(AKRAM) that time the call hit the BTS and caller received a channel to establish a call. After that, the call routed to MSC through BSC. In MSC, we have already created some groups for call center then MSC route the call to the call center suite. After

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received the call, the caller listen to the IVR pre defined audio. If the IVR cannot satisfied the patient then the call routed to the call center doctor. Call center doctor using local LAN and CTI (computer telephony integration). In my proposed call center, we have used patient management software, which makes the data of patient. The mobile number is the unique identity for every patient. If any patient wants to take his follow up treatment, he or she can listen to his prescription easily.

Figure: 3 All call center doctors are busy When a patient call 25726 then the call received by the IVR and it will routed to the call center doctor, if the call center doctors are busy that time the call will be

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routed through the FXO gateway to mobile doctor. In my proposed system, mobile call center doctors are allow to receive the call. The mobile doctors are always predefined login to the call center.

Figure: 4 Mobile doctors received the call

Another important consideration is, the mobile doctor received the call when he or she stays in a silence place other wise not. In my proposed call center, the mobile doctors have some authentication to receive the call and he or she will be liable for the consultancy.

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Conclusion: The proposed call center solution for health care is very much needed in Bangladesh. It is easy to implement in our country. If we have established the health care call center, everyone will be benefited. Not only call center owner but also the poor people in Bangladesh. I am very much optimistic that we will have implemented it in the near future.

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References

[1] http://www.whoban.org/health_system_bangladesh.html [2] http://www.maaws.org/main/index.php [3] http://www.bangladeshgateway.org/healthcarecenter.php [4] http://www.decisionevent.com/html/bangladesh_healthcare.html [5] http://www.internationalbusinessstrategies.com [6] http://ukhealthcare.uky.edu/UKMDs/callcenter.asp [7] http://www.talk2rep.com/healthcare-call-centers.htm [8] http://callcenterz.info/ [9] http://www.intellicare.com/