E-Healthpoint Transforming Rural Healthcare - Essay Example

The founders of the e-healthcare was founded by several people; Allen Hammond, Amit Jain and Chris Dickey with the aim of providing modern healthcare services in the rural areas of India. This area is a considered a home to a lot of people almost seven hundred million people with most of them living on subsistence and also below the poverty line. The healthcare clinics were quick to offer drinking water known to be clean and dispensed using a water operator (AMITEHP, 2011). They also contained rooms for consultation that had a qualified nurse who examined patients and conducted examination using videos mostly in conference settings. To achieve these facilities the above stated people greatly contributed and enhanced achievement of success. Question one: Review the backgrounds of the founders of e-health point. Build a profile of their key experiences, skills, passions, and strengths. How they and their organization practice social entrepreneurship and social enterprise? Dr. Allen Hammond At the age of sixty seven, Allen has completed studies in Harvard and Stanford acquiring education in applied mathematics and engineering. Having achieved a PhD at Harvard, he joined publishing companies with his major being scientific publishing. Among the many books he edited, one specific book is the creating the research news section of the international journal of science which is under the science and technology section in publications. During this time, he was aspired to open a publication that was aimed at increasing public awareness of science, and was a social enterprise publication (Alna, 2012). He enjoyed combining his knowledge of science and technology with ideas related to business and especially those of great assistance to the social community. Allen managed to work with the World Recourses Institute where he hiked to the level of the vice president with great responsibilities associated with special projects and projects. During his time in World resource institute, he developed and catalyzed the starting f various projects that were aimed at providing encouragement for sustaining development using technologies to assist the poor (Chan, 2005). This led to his collaboration with Prahalad of the Michigan University in writing the article about the profits of serving the poor. He built on this idea leading him to leave the world research institute and join Ashoka that is an association for entrepreneurs that is considered to lead in the entire entire world. Together with other individuals, Hammond contributed to the telemedicine idea in rural India. Amit Jain Jian attended CCS University that has its location in India and studied resource management in Indian institute of forest management. He joined Aditya Birla group that majored on handling resource development issues and a number of supply chain functions. He moved to the agricultural finance corporation as the youngest consultant despite his quick rise in the former company. He worked for the trust of India and HLL Life care respectively after leaving the agricultural finance cooperation with his main role been leadership on marketing and social projects. Most of the projects revolved around, mother and child health, reproductive health and prevention of Hiv/ aids (Eysenbach, 2001). In this company, he was given the responsibility of constructing supply chains for health related products. He was successful with the supply chains construction making up to fifty thousand Indian villages in a total of eleven states. He attained a title as the head of marketing creating social marketing programs and numerous distribution channels. In his activities he trained a lot and interacted with various people enabling him to become more passionate about development, create a close relationship with the communities sin the rural India and realized the important of product delivery and importantly at the precise prices (Lakshmi, 2012). His ambition to provide clean drinking water was the major contribution that is associated with his entire life and career. Question 2: Discuss how the mission, business strategy, and tactics of e-health point address the social entrepreneurship framework presented on p. 33 of our text The mission for this entire organization is to provide all round health by creating water point clusters and e-health point. Their main strategies involved initially building water points and ensuring they become cash flow positive. Another strategy includes adding on to the health point where the management must ensure perfect efficiency in capital use. Led by Jain, the health point operations were strategized to have small group of management staff that included a regional manager, the physicians and the operations manager (Lawrence, 2009). Other officials included water head of regional officer and the chief operating officer, although finding these specialists was quite a challenge. The company employed a total of one hundred and fifteen employees that assisted on cutting down costs and also offered a more training ground for already those with basic qualifications. Their mission included quality service which could only be achieved through quality service hence the idea of one week training for each employee (Manx, 2011). In developing their clinics, there is always a three month duration that is entitled by the management for site identification, land acquisition, equipment procurement, getting access to water and lastly owning electricity. Each medical office had to be constructed in an area where water was available and had to be adjacent the water facilities. Since their mission involved quality production, they employed a female nurse for each medical office. Question 3: Review and discuss the successes enjoyed and challenges faced by eHealthpoint. How have they dealt with challenges up until the time of their contemplation of growth opportunities? Give examples Success entails achieving successful eight eHPs that were in operation by April 2011. Among the eight a total of six were enjoying benefits of working and operating in a positive cash flow. Even after combining the eight units the cash flow still remained break even. They began performing their operations by opening water units that had a number of water points and having to add on the health care services as preceding activitie (Wilcox, 2012)s. They faced challenges such as the telemedicine notion acceptance in the rural areas of India. Question 4: What are e-health point’s opportunities for growth? What should they do? How should they measure the impact of successful growth? The e-health point’s main opportunity for its growth is the strategy employed since they have ensured a multi-service platform that is incredibly effective and increasingly profitable for the modern facilities. This strategy has its main aim at winning their customers which is considered the main aspect in a business. In experiencing success, it is essential to ensure complete expansion of the business with complete refining in the business model explained above (Lakshmi, 2012). The management should also offer the government with their strategic plans to gain additional help or rather assistance through governmental funding for projects related to improvements of living standards. These in return would favor their organization increasing their ability to reach more people through moving towards breakeven and building more water. References Alna, M. (2012). eHealthpoint. General Health Magazine , P.p 10. AMITEHP. (2011). E HealthPoint Transforming Rural Healthcare. Changemakers , P.p 11. Chan, D. (2005). Transforming Rural Health Care. Mrdical Issues , P.p 3-5. Eysenbach, G. (2001). What is e-health? Journal od Medical Research , P.p 13. Lakshmi, B. (2012). E Health Point- Providing Affordable Healthcare and Clean Drinking Water To Rural India. Medical Journal , P.p 19. Lawrence, J. (2009). E Health Points. Health Market Innovations , P.p 22. Manx, A. (2011). eHealth. Medical Jounal , P.p 21. Wilcox, D. (2012). Social Enterprise: When Exceptional Scale Becomes the Rule. The Corporate , 19. Read More