More than 1.2 million Americans are living with HIV – including about 156,300 who don’t realize it, according to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
That means 13% of those who are infected with the virus that causes AIDS aren’t in a position to protect their health, or the health of others.
Question: In your opinion, how would an IDEAL healthcare system would change the situation? Briefly describe at least one hypothetical solution that would lead to a breakthrough.
11 comments:
Current Healthcare system does not prescribe certain lab work because of the cost factor--this means that preventive health care is not possible in many health care cases ( 13 % as per the report for HIV). One possible approach can be to deploy custom healthcare based on the profile ( life-style etc.) of a patient. This will help healthcare provider to classify his/her patients into various categories: High Risk, Medium Risk and Low Risk. Health Risk Provider can then try to correlate symptoms and risk category to prescribe lab work. This would help immensely in the early detection of HIV cases without increasing the Health Care cost.
The current healthcare system has the following barriers:
Unequal access / distribution / quality of medical care
Anti - “routine screening” culture among health-care professionals
Financial disincentives to screening
Social stigma
The ideal system:
Financial structure consistent with stated health / wellness goals.
- Insurance reimburses (pays) care providers who follow CDC / NIH recommendations. No exceptions / loopholes.
Health Care Clinics not impacted by social / economic barriers
- “Pop-up” clinics in under-served areas
- All populations insured
Social stigma / Politicization removed from health care setting
- Standard testing protocols expanded to include HIV screening. For example a CBC panel includes HIV screening automatically.
- Renames “sexually transmitted disease” to “socially transmitted disease” covering all diseases that are spread from one person / organism to another.
- Extends privacy laws to populations (protecting high risk populations) as well as individuals
A Healthcare System functioning with the minimum of human involvement could become one of the best solutions for the problem mentioned above. The system will enable anyone to conduct any kind of blood test using a special device at home.
The process can be described like this:
- A simple blood (blood drop) test at home. Using specific device.
- Sending the data from the device to Medical Knowledge Base.
- Knowledge base processing the data and sending back results together with recommendation.
- Patient follows the recommendation to maintain health or cure illnesses.
• Medical professionals update medical knowledge base.
For having an ideal healthcare system is necessary comply with the following:
1.- It has to be private: Any person can access to the system in a private way, without feeling vulnerable about any situation or ashamed.
2.- It has to be quick: You can have the results almost instantaneously. So you can take action in an early stage of any disease and treat it.
3.- It has to give you a treatment: If the system had all your data and already identified your disease, then the system should give you a treatment for the disease.
Lets imagine every person in the world had a device in their home that allow them to identify if they are sick. It’s almost like having a TV or a Computer so everybody has it. This device can process samples of blood, urine and saliva, all the data obtain by the samples are matched with the info in the central server to determine if you have a disease. The system is amazing because every day the scientists have more information on how to identify diseases in a more effective way and they add the new and vanguardist treatments.
If your disease is treatable, then the system send you the medicine directly to your home, and it reminds you to do more tests during the treatment to ensure it was the correct diagnosis.
If the disease is not treatable with medicine, the system suggest you to go to a clinic. If you need an operation, you can use a medical capsule who will perform the operation(Yes, they exist! like in the movie Prometheus). Only If your disease is unknown you go to see a Doctor.
The problem of existed healthcare in your example: People do not know that they have HIV. The first symptoms can appear in few years. Most often, HIV occurs if you have sex with more then 1 partner. So, I like the Sanjeev idea: we can group people according to risk (from lifestyle): Low, Medium and High. We imagine that we are able to gather and read vital signs such as temperature continuously. Even with this information we are able to identify that something is wrong and guide a patient.
But let's imagine that we have preventative medicine. We know that people with certain behavior are more likely to have unprotected sex with few partners. Not only we incentivize them to change behavior to prevent HIV but also check up periodically (if we have in-house laboratory, like Karin described, it will be amazing. If not, The System (that controls everyone health) can deliver it to your doorstep and check you up).
All in All, i think advanced check up system will solve 1/2 of the problem. And Behavioral medicine can solve the second half (by preventing you from decease).
In case of HIV, more the prevention, the better.
1. Ideal system should start with mandatory test for all mothers carrying, and for new born.
2. For all the people who are deducted with HIV, tests for their spouses / boy friend / girl friend should be done for free. System should intimate them to get the tests done.
3. Like others have mentioned, identify high risk group, do tests for them, advice proper medication and take precautions not to spread them.
4. It can also be suggested as one of the mandatory tests as part of health check up, when people decide to have family. So that next generation is not affected.
Basically as many tests done at crucial stages in life is important as the symptoms does not show up immediately for the effected person & it should be free of cost so that it is accessible to all.
In my opinion, first we need to ask question by doing user study as to:
1. Why people are not getting tested for HIV?
Depending on the answer we can find a possible solution.
Otherwise we can try a few things out such as:
1. Build awareness of HIV risk and how to get tested for the same
2. Incentivize people to get tested (employers or gov can give credits) and make the testing completely free
3. Protect the privacy : Since there is Stigma associated with HIV, make sure the people getting tested have complete privacy protection and no one can get their result without their consent, not even employers etc
4. Make the procedure less than 2 min long
5. There should be an option to 'Do It YourSelf Test' so people don't have to find and go to a clinic etc
6. Spread more awareness about health and wellness, specially the positive attributes that people with HIV live long and healthy lives as long as they get treated early and regularly.
According to the report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 13% of the americans living with HIV aren't aware that they have the disease. This fact is the main issue to address since people who aren't aware that they have the disease not only don't get treatment and are in a bigger risk but also are in a very high risk to pass the disease to other people.
Because of this in my opinion it is most important to build awareness of the disease, and of the ways to get the disease, the best way is through education - school, university and other programs as well as, going to high risk populations and explaining to them the different ways to get the disease while sending them to get tested and giving them access to birth control that can help prevent passing the disease.
Ideal system: up to the sec diagnosis
Hypothetical solution: phone hiv detector
Ideal system: up to the sec detection of others and you
Hypothetical solution: smart phone hiv detector
There are some problems around the detection of diseases such as AIDS.
- Healthcare costs
- Patient health concerns
- Health system access - poverty related
- Miss protection
An IDEAL healthcare system would reduce the rate of people who are affected and don't know it. By creating a system that stimulate people to take HIV tests or donate blood (that will pass by an HIV test before join the blood bank) would be possible to catalog those people situation. The stimulus could be through reducing driving penalties; giving free food with a food service partner, etc
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