Intelehealth: Tech-enabled healthcare for all

For nearly half of the world’s people, even basic healthcare can be difficult to access for both financial and logistical reasons. Approximately 100 million people fall into poverty due to health issues every year. In rural India, the situation is particularly dire, with only 6.1 doctors and 10.6 nurses for every 10 000 people.

In some rural areas of India, local health centres staffed by community health workers or nurses are the only accessible source of care. In the 40% of cases that cannot be treated there, patients must visit a higher-level medical facility, which means hours of travel, foregone earnings and out-of-pocket expenses for transportation and care.

Many patients therefore delay seeking care for health problems that are preventable, curable or at least treatable. Women face even higher hurdles as they often require permission to visit a facility, even if accompanied.

Intelehealth addresses these barriers with a telemedicine platform that connects rural patients and community health workers with remote doctors via audio and video calls. Integrated with point-of-care diagnostic systems, the platform supports teleconsultations, electronic prescriptions and medication dispensing.

Powered by its digital assistant Ayu, Intelehealth’s app streamlines consultations by drawing on a large library of expert protocols to guide health workers through screenings and diagnostic questions. Available in 15 languages, the app is easy to use even for people with low digital literacy and allows for offline data collection.

Currently active in India, Kyrgyzstan and Syria, Intelehealth offers its telemedicine platform as well as implementation support, including capacity-building and behaviour change initiatives, to healthcare providers in the public sector and at NGOs.

Intelehealth also operates a small network of own clinics (4 facilities), a legacy of the venture’s beginnings, in Maharashtra state. While these clinics constitute a small fraction of its overall outreach, they serve as a valuable innovation hub where Intelehealth can, for example, test new ideas and conduct research.

Intelehealth’s digital assistant makes teleconsultations more cost-effective while increasing the quality of care. As of mid-2024, the venture had facilitated a cumulative total of over 4.5 million teleconsultations – three-quarters of them in the previous 12 months – by 9 000 frontline health workers connected with over 3 000 doctors across 14 projects. By Intelehealth’s reckoning, the approach reduces the number of cases requiring referral to higher-level healthcare facilities by 75%. Across several studies measuring patient benefits, it found travel distance savings of 22 to 37 kilometres and monetary savings of USD 7.50 to USD 15 per consultation.

Intelehealth plans to expand its footprint in India and enhance its platform’s diagnostic capabilities and scalability. Funding from the Entrepreneurs for Resilience Award will help it conduct large-scale government projects and build evidence of the effectiveness of its approach. The venture also looks forward to benefiting from external expertise in the areas of software/tech development, particularly around artificial intelligence; business operations scaling, to manage and optimise its growth; and impact measurement, to identify cost-effective, sustainable ways to track impact.

The copyright of all images displayed lies with Intelehealth.