As we start the year 2023, we wanted to take some time and reflect on the year that went by. 2022 was a tremendous year for Everwell filled with successes, learnings and new beginnings. Some of the highlights of our work over the past 12 months are reflected here and we are excited about all that 2023 has in store for us.
From new partnerships to strengthening older ones, our team of 75+ continues to work towards our mission -- to create and scale user-centric technologies that can positively impact health.
In 2022, we’ve had the opportunity to implement our solutions in three new high TB burden contexts -- Burkina Faso, DR Congo and Nigeria along with continuing our work on a larger scale in Bangladesh, Myanmar, Philippines, India, Tanzania, South Africa, Ethiopia, Ukraine and Uganda. Globally, in our non-India work about 70,000 individuals sought care across diseases and touchpoints of the cascade of care; and an estimated 1500 staff actively used the Everwell Hub to support these individuals on treatment.
It was heartening to see how patients belonging to a geo-politically challenged Ukraine were still able to take their TB medication and the staff supporting their treatment were able to remotely manage their treatment journey using the Everwell Hub. Similarly, when the city of Delhi was crippling with COVID, hundreds of people living with HIV were supported on the Everwell Hub reminding them to take their daily ARVs, predicting running out of medication (and therefore prompt door delivery of medication) and attempting to bring lost to follow up PLHIVs back on treatment. We were enthralled to see numerous patients successfully completing their TB treatment, bringing us closer to the fight against the disease.
We had multiple successes from the largest TB management deployment in the world, Ni-kshay -- India’s end-to-end digital health tool to combat TB. This is what Dr. Rajendra P Joshi, Deputy Director General (TB) had to say about our close association.
India is committed to ending TB by 2025 and establishing next generation program management built on state-of-art digital ICT systems. Developing and maintaining a modern, interoperable, and scalable ICT has been identified as a key strategic area for accelerating the national response against TB. Ni-kshay, the digital ICT platform for TB management in India, managed by Everwell Health Solutions has scaled new heights with ~307 million USD paid out across different Direct Benefit transfers (social benefit schemes) under NTEP. The patient application, TB Aarogya Sathi was downloaded by ~330k users, including >100k TB patients.
Several new features were released in 2022, enabling 70,000 monthly users to fully leverage the digital ecosystem. A novel Pradhan Mantri TB Mukt Bharat Abhiyaan initiative was launched, wherein ~50k citizens registered and committed to support nearly 1 million TB patients. Under Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission, ~50,000 health IDs, (a universal Digital Health record identifier) were generated. In addition to catering to 12 million TB patients, ~150k TB preventive therapy beneficiaries are now registered. In line with the vision of having a unified ecosystem, Ni-kshay is now integrated with Ni-kshay Aushadi, wherein ~730k patients were dispensed medication. To empower NTEP for real-time programmatic monitoring, a Strategic Operation Centre for TB was launched.
The past couple of years has seen exponential changes in the digital health space. In 2022, the Everwell team worked towards core functionalities that ensure rapid and stable deployments. We remodeled our architecture to be more interoperable so that there aren’t multiple fragmented systems; more agile so that deployments can be configured to address program or user needs and more standardized to complement our continued work in interoperability.
Looking Ahead
We envision a world where every person is empowered to live a healthy life; come 2023, we hope to design and deploy more user-centric solutions that are easily accessible, economical and encourage individuals to take the onus of their health and treatment journey with a dedicated citizen facing app. We hope to engage with health care professionals across service delivery touchpoints, understand the gaps in their daily working, and hope to bridge these gaps with technology led solutions, thereby continuing to design human centered technology solutions for all.
For more information about the Hub Health Companion Application, Patient Treatment Journey, and other Everwell offerings, connect with us at contact@everwell.org