Akhtar Md Haseen, Ramkumar Janakarajan
Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, India.
Discov Health Syst. 2023;2(1):3. doi: 10.1007/s44250-023-00017-x. Epub 2023 Jan 23.
Indian healthcare system is in immediate need of a new healthcare delivery model to increase healthcare accessibility and improve the health outcomes of the marginalized. Inaccessibility and underutilization of Primary Health Centers (PHCs) disproportionately affect people living in remote areas. It is thus imperative for the designers, engineers, health professionals, and policymakers to come together with a collaborative mindset to develop innovative interventions that sustainably manage the accessibility of PHCs at large, promote preventive health, and thus improve the health outcomes of hard-to-reach communities. This article examines the available literature on barriers to primary healthcare in Indian context, the reason of failure of PHCs and the way forward. The article further analysis literature on existing Mobile Medical Units (MMUs) as an alternate solution to conventional PHCs and attempt to extract the major lessons to propose a mobile Primary Health Center (mPHC) in contrast to the existing conventional static PHCs. The intention is to find out the research gaps in the existing literature and try to address the same for future researchers, designers, engineers, health professionals and policy makers to think forward to make this idea of a mobile Primary Health Center (mPHC), as the main delivery model to cater basic healthcare services to the underserved communities.
印度医疗保健系统迫切需要一种新的医疗服务提供模式，以提高医疗可及性并改善边缘化群体的健康状况。初级卫生保健中心（PHCs）的不可及性和利用不足对生活在偏远地区的人们产生了不成比例的影响。因此，设计师、工程师、卫生专业人员和政策制定者必须以合作的心态共同努力，开发创新干预措施，以可持续地管理初级卫生保健中心的整体可及性，促进预防性健康，从而改善难以到达社区的健康状况。本文研究了印度背景下关于初级医疗保健障碍的现有文献、初级卫生保健中心失败的原因以及未来的发展方向。本文进一步分析了关于现有移动医疗单位（MMUs）作为传统初级卫生保健中心替代解决方案的文献，并试图提取主要经验教训，以提出与现有的传统静态初级卫生保健中心相对的移动初级卫生保健中心（mPHC）。目的是找出现有文献中的研究空白，并试图为未来的研究人员、设计师、工程师、卫生专业人员和政策制定者解决这些问题，以便他们向前思考，将移动初级卫生保健中心（mPHC）这一理念作为向服务不足社区提供基本医疗服务的主要提供模式。
