Data leverage is the key to driving healthcare in India
While digital disease surveillance holds promise a lot depends on the data and its quality in order for us to make meaningful predictions
Disease surveillance system in India and how it can help combat diseases
Disease Surveillance is an important tool today with the advent of new and fast spreading diseases. In some healthcare systems, it is used not only to check the spread of the infectious diseases but also to monitor communicable diseases. India has had a disease surveillance system in place since 2004 and systematically the disease data at the district level has been collected for states and collated at state and then national level to five us an idea of disease patterns in the region.
How digital disease surveillance systems could have prevented the Delhi dengue outbreak
India is perhaps the only country in the world (of its size) where addressing preventable diseases continues to drain public resources. The Delhi dengue outbreak is a case in point. This is the third or fourth time in a decade (the first being in 2006) that the city has failed to prevent the spread of this disease. Close to 3,500 cases of dengue have been reported in Delhi over the last month, of which nearly all cases required hospitalization.