Digital Health Inclusion to Achieve Universal Health Coverage in the Era of 4th Industrial Revolution

The lack of proper healthcare facilities, resource constraints, and a non-functional referral system hinder Bangladesh’s healthcare system offering comprehensive primary and preventive healthcare (PPH) services. To address these issues, cloud-based medical system framework (CMED) health created the digital general practitioner (GP) model for the rural people of Bangladesh with digital health account and structured referral mechanism. In this study, we introduce this digital GP model integrated with digital platforms to ensure PPH with referrals for rural Bangladesh. Overall, the digital GP model consists of applications for users, health workers, GP doctors, and management, for service delivery and monitoring. By utilizing this digital GP model, rural people can get regular doorstep health checkups, track their health conditions, take necessary steps to prevent diseases in early stages, reduce their out-of-pocket expenditure, and consult with GP doctors through telemedicine or physical visit. During the pilot project, this digital GP model served a total of 11,890 people, consisting of 4752 men (39.97%) and 7138 women (60.03%). From our data analysis, 438 (7.02%) adult people were suspected of having diabetes among 6239 blood sugar measurement, 164 (2.56%) adult people were found obese among 6383 BMI measurement, and 1991 (19.41%) adult people were suspected of hypertension among 10,260 blood pressure measurement. In addition, among young people, females were “underweight” at a higher percentage (72, or 22.71%) than males (52, or 20.72%) among 568 BMI measurement. Finally, the digital GP concept is a great method for the government to implement digital health inclusion and move closer to universal health coverage.