Telenor keen to expand health services by mobile

Matthew Guilford

Telenor, the majority shareholder of Grameenphone, is looking to build greater partnerships with the government, and nongovernmental organisations to scale up healthcare services through mobile phones, a top official said.
“Partnerships with NGOs, governments and development partners are going to be central to what we are doing both in terms of providing content and advice,” Telenor Group's Global Head of Health Matthew Guilford said in an interview with The Daily Star during a recent regional health informatics conference in Dhaka.
As the use of information technology and mobile phones in health system is coming up in a big way, Telenor and its business units across the globe too are making great strides in its promotion.
In Bangladesh, Grameenphone, of which Telenor owns 55.8 percent shares, offers a service—'health line'—through which customers can call and get instant health advice from physicians round the clock.
It is partnering with an initiative called Mobile Alliance for Maternal Action, which uses mobile phones to provide life-saving health information to parents-to-be and new parents.
Grameenphone is also experimenting with a telemedicine project to enable patients suffering from skin diseases and general health problems to consult with specialised doctors via video conferencing, reducing the number of hospital visits and saving time.
“Our focus is on complementing the healthcare system that the health ministry or other government agencies have built, and contributing to help lower the economic burden on the health system,” said Guilford.
“In the coming months we will be working to build regional and global partnerships with different parties who can complement our potential contributions to the health value chain,” he said.
Telenor, the sixth largest global telecom company, already has a strong partnership with Unicef where it works almost in every Asian market, specifically on maternal and child health. It also has global partnerships with internet services companies like Facebook and Google.
“We really believe that to get telecom industry to break out of the cycle of small pilots in health, we need a partnership-based approach,” he added.
On challenges of mobile health, Guilford said they acknowledge that talking to a physician over the phone is never the same as talking in person.
“But we think that you do not always need to see a doctor in person. In a situation where a physician may simply say that you should go to the emergency room or take for now some paracetamols, providing that advice over the phone can save someone a lot of time and effort.”
As Bangladesh grows in 3G adoptions and smartphones, the gap between in-person experience and phone-based experience is getting narrower, he said.
Mentioning various mobile health services in Asia and Europe, including introduction of health apps and services for old people so they can be more independent, he said they are experimenting with many different things and considering ways how it can scale up.
With Bangladesh as an advanced market for mobile health in Asia, he said what Grameenphone is doing here is among the best of Telenor Group.
“The only way we can scale up a service is if it has a business model that is sustainable,” Guilford said, adding that resources of the NGOs or development partners are not limitless.
“So if we want to reach tens of millions of people, to have the impact that we believe we need to have services that are at least self sustaining,” he said.
There are people who could question the mobile company's providing of financial and health services.
“But we clearly see the private sector's contribution as it reaches many places not serviced otherwise. And I am convinced that we will look back at mobile health ten years from now on, and see that  it was the same story,” Guilford said.