India’s health-care system is in dire straits, perhaps worst of
all in the country’s countless “informal settlements,” or slums.
Health centers are the cornerstone of health care in India’s
rural areas, where most of the country’s 1.2 billion people
reside. For the most part, modern technology is little known in
the centers, with each covering a population of 100 000 spread
over about 100 villages. That is where the IEEE Humanitarian
Technology Challenge hopes to make its mark. In a pilot program,
it has introduced a central database in two clinics, fed by
information from RFID tracking cards that identify each patient
and handheld devices through which a patient’s medical history
and ailments are filed and accessed. It’s a giant step up, for
the clinics often have limited patient records or sometimes none
at all. Those that do keep records might use paper notebooks,
but there is no filing system. And notebooks can be misplaced,
memories fade, and mistakes happen. At the heart of the new HTC
program are the c