This case study identifies how in a SMART SOCIETY setup outbreak of disease in the local communities can be detected early and contained efficiently with Pharmacy Assistance Modules (PAM). This case study also emphazies on how to execute Smart Medical Assistance and Remedial Transactions on an integrative platform, leveraging the connected systems of different medical facilities, pharmaceuticals and governing bodies to create a Smart Community Health Management System.
Rapid urbanization along with their own glories adds a layer of complication by spreading infectious diseases. Such spread, if not detected and contained during the early stages, leaves us with medical tragedies which affect the communities in many ways, e.g., the SARS outbreak in 2003. In the post-SARS scenario many desperate efforts have been and are being made to device an early detection system to monitor the health patterns to pick up abnormalities in the community that lead to common ailments such as Flu right through major epidemics.
A person often as a reflective response opts to ignore or self diagnose and treat the very subtle symptoms exhibited by the body before coming down with an ailment. The next stage is where people walk over to a local pharmacy (drugstore) to pickup some off-the-shelf (nonprescription) medicines based on the self diagnosis knowledge or advertisement influence, and hope to relieve themselves. Often in a short while the situation worsens and people then scramble to seek qualified medical advice and attention. Unfortunately the very first few hours are very critical for bringing any infectious diseases under control from becoming an epidemic.
Local pharmacies often observe that there is an imbalance of health in the community as number of people walk into the store or browse through the aisle figuring the variants of the off-the-shelf drugs, approaching the pharmacists for help and more importantly through the volume of sale of a particular combination of drug. This, if properly interpreted can be a beacon in the early warning system about the possible outbreak.
Assuming we have this information decoded, how do we integrate it with the rest of the infrastructure to enable the residents of the community to be aware of such an outbreak and curb its rapid spread?Let's look at how such outbreaks can be detected and contained in a SMART SOCIETY setup: Person M (assume to be a recent immigrant to make things even lucid) with wife W and kids B and G recently moved to a new neighborhood N1. The neighborhood has a pharmacy P, a regional hospital H, a walk in clinic C with family physician FP1. |
