Intelehealth started as a four-person team project at a Master’s Program at the Johns Hopkins University Center for Bioengineering Innovation and Design. The students involved created an app that lets health workers in rural communities where doctors are not available, to act as a proxy for them.
CNN Money reports that when a patient arrives at a clinic, a health worker uses Intelehealth to create a record with demographic and personal data, the issues a patient is having, along with photos. CEO Neha Goel says that the company has built data collection protocols for 80% of conditions that are prevalent in rural communities.
The patient summary is then sent to an offsite Indian doctor, often a retired physician, who makes a diagnosis and sends it back to the clinic with a prescription or referral for further care. Some of the patient data is anonymized and used for research.
The advantage of Intelehealth’s Android app is that it can operate on low bandwidth. It is currently in beta and will launch officially in two months.
