Vision of an eye, Smile on the face: Can telemedicine help?

Nobel decorated economist’s duo, Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo in their book, 'A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty' introduce the concept of poor economics and mention that

Anti-poverty policy has failed over the years because of an inadequate understanding of poverty.

A Story of a child, a story of a father

As an engineer, I used to always question why there is poverty, child mortality and other medical issues in ultra-poor communities in spite of great innovations. This feeling was amplified when I visited a farmer’s family during a health camp in the Indian rural community. The head of the family lost his vision because of delayed medical treatment and his son was forced to leave his education to support his family. That’s sad! The other question that came to my mind was that

Can telemedicine save this situation; if yes how can we diffuse this technology in the ultra-poor community?

Coming to my research, the diffusion of telemedicine technology depends on two factors: fraction of early adopters with time & social influence generated by early adopters. In the case of rural communities, the fraction of early adopters is negligible and hence, social influence generated by them is also negligible. Factors affecting them is calculated by measuring accessibility, affordability and quality services & public awareness through survey and talking to community people to know their beliefs. So, to improve early adopters and social influence generated by it, we need to improve these factors.

So now I want to ask the same question again;

Can telemedicine save the vision of eye and smile on the face?

The answer lies not only in innovation or technology but also with the design and diffusion of technology, by a better understanding of how the poor lives, why they make the choice they make, what are the specific traps that hold them back and how to unlock these traps.