Most of areas lack medical resource
As we can see, today there are still lots of areas lacking medical facilities and medical resources, doctors, so people are inconvenient to see a doctor or difficult to have regular full body checkup every year because of long distance transportation, on the other hand, most of the medical professionals are not willing to work in low developed areas, the public health condition and primary health care in these areas need dramatic improvement, because these issues are essential for local government, in short, this is foundamental for the wellbeing of the public.
Health kiosk solves the problem of short medical resources
Government is the leader for health kiosk network construction
By multiple function health checkup station, it provides chronic disease-related health checkups at one station. it doesn’t need a professional doctor but only a trained operator, the health checkup station could be everywhere, especially mountain & rural areas, or regions far away from developed cities, people could have health checkup and have an online diagnosis through telemedicine service.
Benefit for government
Health kiosks will be most beneficial after we build up the network, which means it will bring obvious advantages for all people when the health kiosk is accessible everywhere, the only role who can achieve this is the government, which has the authority to build such a system. The government could monitor the health condition of all the people in these areas, accurately knows disease severeness level and patient amount of different disease, so the government could set up or modify policies with corresponding medical investment and assistance, medical education, which will avoid big waste of public resources and improve the wellness of the people.
Primary healthcare situation in China:
- In the first tier cities of China, such as Beijing, Shanghai, or other capital cities of each province, there are adequate hospitals which has best medical resources in local regions, which means the patients could easily visit hospital to take face-to-face diagnosis without much assistance of health kiosks, because they can rely on the secondary level of medical examination equipment.
- While in the second, third tier cities, or rural, mountain areas where have less health check organizations, most of the hospitals are short of medical staff as well as the medical examination equipment, in some regions, due to the large land area, the people living places are far to the hospitals, lots of people are not convenient to go to hospitals or see doctors.
- In this condition, each regional departments of health require the local hospitals and clinics must provide at least 4 times a year healthcare checkup for local public by a traceable health check system, because In old days, most of nurses take the examinations and write down the record manually, which cannot be monitored or traced back and lack of efficient government surveillance.
- In past 10 years, digital health and health check kiosk becomes more popular in the most of the regions in China, first it is the medical reform requirement of government, second it is because different health check kiosks can fit different scenarios, such as self service or multiple health kiosks are more suitable in first tier cities and portable health kiosks are more suitable for remote regions which need frequent to-community or to-family doctor visit.
- In recent years, lots of portable health kiosk are deployed in the second and below regions, such as Hubei, Anhui, Jiangxi provinces, and so on. The digital health system is not only a useful tool for the government to improve the efficiency of primary healthcare system, but also benefit for local people’s wellbehing, furthermore, it makes better allocation of government medical resources.
- Another phenomenon in most of regions, the man power shortage is a big problem, as we can expect, the health kiosks and telemedicine system can effectively release the heavy burden of the governments and mostly benefit to the public.
- Next generation of diagnosis will be a mixing of face-to-face and online consultation together, people will select if they would come to hospitals or meet doctors online, such as rehabilitation, chronic disease routine check-up and prescriptions, psychological evaluation, health kiosk and telemedicine system will be a supplement tool for the public, people could enjoy the benefit of mixing diagnosis.
The government is in charge of building the health kiosk network.
Health station construction
“Health station” is a name for recently constructed health care projects organized by the ministry of health of China government, the “health station” begun to appear by setting up one or a few health checkup kiosk in small clinics nearby a village, firstly it just tests vital signs, then it added more functions, such as blood test, urine test, these chronic disease-related health checkups, each resident need to register and bind his personal information together, each time when they finish the health screenings, the system will transfer the data to the server and stored under his name, which we call it personal medical record, by AI technology, the system will provide health and diet advice.
Contract doctor for personal health
“Contract doctor” is a doctor for the resident to choose as his personal health consultant, contract doctor is responsible for the residents who digitally signed a contract with him/her, he/she need to check the medical records and provide a diagnosis with prescriptions, including other health advice, such as diet, living, mood advice, contract doctor can talk with the patient by telemedicine platform.
Personal health archive
The telemedicine platform is required to set up an archive for each residence, including his identity information, previous disease history, family inherited disease history, plus his continuing health check result data, each residence should be provided long term health assistance, such as diet advice, sports activity advice, mental health guidance, each residence is encouraged to assign a home doctor so he could have an in-time medical service in an urgent situation.
Government monitor the health condition in the area
As the management center, the government need to have an overview over local public health condition, including total population amount, the total population of different diseases, different age groups or gender groups of different disease, and different patient distribution in each district(or area), the total population of different stages of a specific diseased, by this health information, the government is able to setup or adjust its health policies more accurately.