Discovering Medical Tourism

As stated in the previous article, Indian medicine has a great asset: its past. In fact, Ayurveda, the hollistic medicine principle derived from centuries of medical tradition, is an original medicine with a certain efficiency that can be built into a decisive competitive factor by Indian hospitals!

Previously, we talked about preventive care and diagnosis according to ayurvedic medicine. What about Disease management? there are four main methods by which and Ayurvedic physician manages disease:

• Cleansing and detoxifying (shodan)
• Palliation (shaman)
• Rejuvenation (rasayana)
• Mental Hygiene and Spiritual Healing (Satvajaya)

Cleansing and detoxifying (shodan)

This is the gore part of Ayurvedic medicine unfortunately and this can really scare off any person willing to discover ayurvedic medicine: pancha karma is all about vomiting, bowel purging, nasal douching to remove toxins from the body. The good part is that in preparation for cleansing an herbal oil massage may be performed (oil is well absorb by the skin and helps to eliminate toxins while passing through the body). herbs can also be introduced in certain parts of the body (especially the noze) to increase resistance to enzyme reaction. After the cleansing, the patient is given ghee (clarified butter) and yogurth to restore the intestinal flora.

Hi! Let me take care of your bowels

Palliation (shaman)

Shaman focuses more on the spiritual part of the healing and uses a combination of herbs, fasting, yoga streches, breathing exercices, meditation and lying under the sun (ah! that’s better than cleansing the body). in fact, the sun is not only a source of heat and light but according to ayurveda a way to better absorb vitamin D, to improve circulation and to strenghten the bones (the time of exposure required depends on your dosha type). Actually Shaman is often used as an alternative to pancha karma (see above ) for those who are mentally weak to undergo this kind of treatment (like me!). Shaman is really sweeter: one of the herbal therapies prescribed consists in consuming honey with certain herbs such as pippili (long pepper), ginger, cinnamon and black pepper…

Meditation as an alternative to cleansing

 Rejuvenation (rasayana)

Rasayana is a program of tonification which is similar to a physiologic tune up.  It is used to restore virility and vitality to the reproductive system, countering strterilirty and infertility, bringing forth healthier  progeny and improving sexual performance. Ayurvedic medicine uses three methods for rayasana: special herbs prepared as powder, pills, jellies and tablets; mineral preparations specific to a person’s condition and exercices (again yoga exercices).

Mental Hygiene and Spiritual Healing (Satvajaya)

Satvajaya is a method aiming at releasing psychological stress, emotional distress and unconscious negative beliefs. This is one of the precursors of stress management and operates in a very original and “modern” way. The categories of satvajaya include mantra or sound therapy to change vibraotry patterns of the mind, yantra or concentrating on geometric figures to take the mind out of ordinary modes of thinking and gems, metals and crystals for their vibratory healing powers.

Yantra: one type of the geometric figures to alleviate stress 

CONCLUSION 

All in all, Ayurvedic medicine is extremly original and should be put forward by Indian hospitals as an innovavtion in treatment. When people hear about Ayurveda they can barely figure out hwat it’s all about. My gut feeling is that some Indian HospitalGroups are being too conservative and too “un Indian” in their product offer for international patients. Again if the market is price driven today, I really think that it will all result to quality on a few years: ”MADE IN KOREA” used to be a problem but then Hyundai and Samsung surfaced with their different and new products to propell the cognitive perception  of Korea very high in people’s mind. To  me, the same can occur with the label ”OPERATED IN INDA“: nobody will feel confortable with it up until quality and differentiation  will be knitted to Indian medical providers

PIPS (Personalised information Platerform for Life and Health Services) is another european medical project we would like to dwell upon. I really loved this project when told about it while visiting Brussels a few weeks ago. Why? Because this project perfectly encompasses the Hypocrate oath by trying to diffuse the best medical services available for all.

PIPS is one the major projects in the European Commission PIPEline

The project is an holistic approach opf medical services as it joins Healthcare suppliers, citizens, Public Organisations, drug suppliers, food industry, health policy makers etc etc. How is it working. Let me reproduce an exemple quoted from their brochure:

“Mary Johnson is a diabetic/infracted and her GP suggest to contact a specialist dor an appointement. Mary goes to Dr Brown who uses the PIPS system and prescribes Mary a therapy and a set of tests to be done at ho,e. At home PIPS reminds Mary to take her test and after having done it recognizes an abnormal state. The system may change the prescription following t he doctor’s indication and asking for approval or will alert Dr Brown who, looking at her vital signs and the results  of the questionnaire will suggest Mary to fix an appointement to review the therapy”

Simply put wow! We here have  all rolled in a dime:

+ an appointement manager

+ a knowledge manager (convening heterogeneous information into an intelligible flow)

+ an at home medical care manager with high user interaction

+ a follow up system with an active warning system able to fix a prescription (decision support system)

The sustainability of the system in the mind of the PIPS creators relies upon the involvement of all healthcare actors to create a fluid delivery value chain that can generate valuable information. PIPS has been conceived to be always auto sufficient. The preventive care generated by PIPS is for instance doubled: a primary prevenetion after a disease to reduce side effects and a secondary prevention to reduce the risk of relapse or other collateral disease. Another interesting contribution made by PIPS is the help it provides to act over the prevalent cuases of non compliance such as abandoning treatment before completion.

PIPS is a great project because it is a societal project where everybody is involved in order to help everybody. It is a great vision of medical practices where all forces are garnered in order to help all three kinds of actors involved in medical care namely experts, medical professionals such as GP looking to tie up with qualified experts on rtare condition disease and the end-user at the other end of the delivery value chain that can use this system to assist him in his everyday life according to his IT litteracy (which is simplified to the extreme..)