SL Institute of Digital Health Innovation and Commercialisation – a first of its kind
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Here’s some great news. The Cabinet of Ministers on Tuesday took an important decision in the right direction for Digital Health in Sri Lanka.
They approved the setting up of the Sri Lanka Institute of Digital Health Innovation and Commercialization (http://www.news.lk/cabinet-decusions). The cabinet recognized that the aggregation of genomic medicine and information and communication technology – Digital Health – is revolutionizing health care. They also recognized that there has been increased investment in digital health in other parts of the world and that future of health care would depend on digital health innovation. The proposed institute is to be set up as a public private partnership that would enable the country to gain the best benefits in terms of health gains for its populations as well as wealth creation through innovation and commercialization. The background to this landmark decision has been 18 years in the making for the promoters of the institute.
In 1996 the Sri Lanka Medical Association set up a committee to promote the integration of computers and information technology to the health care sector of Sri Lanka. On 18 November 1998, that committee grew up to be an organization of its own, the Health Informatics Society of Sri Lanka (HISSL) (http://www.hissl.lk). In 2007, HISSL, advocated with the Postgraduate Institute of Medicine (PGIM) of the University of Colombo to set up the first ever masters course in Biomedical Informatics in the world that was specially designed to trained doctors and dentists in Health Informatics. The course has so far produced 90 doctors and dentists who are now spearheading implementation of digital health in Sri Lanka’s health sector. To cap it all last week, the first batch of 22 doctors and dentists who would go on to read for a MD in Health Informatics was selected by the PGIM. This puts Sri Lanka on track to becoming only the second country in the world behind the US to produce board certified Health Informatics Specialists. The first such specialists will enter our healthcare workforce in the year 2020. Sri Lanka is setting the trend for the world in creating Health Informaticians through its own unique model.
Global player
In this background, over the past few years, the health informatics community of Sri Lanka has been positioning itself slowly as a global player in eHealth, mHealth and now Digital Health. This was done in the form of a series of conferences; eHealth Sri Lanka (http://www.hissl.lk) in 2013 and 2014; eHealth Asia (http://www.ehealthasia.org) in 2015 and the Commonwealth Conference on Digital Health for Health and Wellbeing in 2016 (http://www.cma2016.org). Today Sri Lanka is spearheading a Commonwealth-wide Digital Health Network initiative. What Sri Lanka needed was a flagship institute that could leverage on this success. The support of the government therefore in the form of the decision to set up a Sri Lanka Institute of Digital Health could not have come at a better time.
Interestingly it was only a couple of weeks ago that one of the most successful businessmen in the country – Dhammika Perera – put his weight behind Digital Health with an announcement that he intends to enter the Digital Health space with projects that were aimed at introducing two healthcare platforms to Sri Lanka – IBM Watson and Telemedicine. His entry seemed to be altruistic because he said that he wants to create these platforms and hand them over to the government. We welcome his entry into this sector because that is the kind of serious endorsement that we would like to see from the private sector towards Digital Health – not just creating appointment booking systems.
Turning back to the institute, the Sri Lanka Institute of Digital Health has a greater vision beyond technology transfer. The vision of the institute is to be a globally recognized centre of excellence and thought leader for emerging markets healthcare innovations (extremely affordable but also profitable innovations to diagnose, treat or cure major health and wellness conditions that affect people who live in emerging economies). The institute will champion frugal innovations for emerging economies with high commercial value. The term frugal innovation dominates thinking today in major companies, universities, and research institutions. There is clear recognition that such innovations are best developed in emerging markets and not in the Western labs where spending excesses are the antithesis of ‘frugal’.
Frugal innovation
Take for example two digital health innovations that have transformed Sri Lanka’s health care system – the eIMMR system and the District Nutrition Monitoring System (DNMS). I have described these systems in my columns in the past. Both systems won eSwabhimani awards – the former in 2013 and the latter this year in 2016. They were frugal innovation in the true sense of the word. There is no reason why these cannot be made into global products. In fact the indication that they are ready to be transformed came when the DNMS was awarded the mBillionth award for the best early stage app in South Asia in July this year. We however need the platform and the mechanism to take such innovations not only to the local market but also to the global market beyond the confines of the national health services. The Sri Lanka Institute of Digital Health is expected to catalyze that process in partnership with local and global companies that have already lined up to partner with the institute.
(The writer is President, Commonwealth Medical Association; Past President (2012), Sri Lanka Medical Association; the President, Health Informatics Society of
Sri Lanka and a Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences of Sri Lanka.
He can be contacted via
vajirahwd@hotmail.com).