Every day across Asia, expectant mothers face a critical choice: should they endure the hardship of traveling potentially hundreds of miles and waiting for hours in line in order to visit a doctor, or should they cross their fingers, and hope for the best for their baby. The choice is not simple. In countries like Indonesia, there are 10,000 patients per specialist at any given time. Waiting rooms can take upwards of 12 hours, and that’s after a mother has left her village behind for a multi-day excursion.
Each day, in countries like India, more than 150 miscarriages occur, not because of something a mother has done wrong, and not because of some external force. They occur because patients lack access to doctors that can offer basic, or preventative care. The same is true for the scary high maternal death rates in places like Indonesia, where mothers who have given birth are almost five times likelier to pass away from complications.
According to the United Nations, 832 women die every day from preventable causes while giving birth. 90% of these women live in developing or underserved countries in the African and Asian continents.
It isn’t only pregnancy complications that are going untreated. It’s estimated that only ⅓ of the population has access to medical imaging services, which can contribute to, detect, and treat some of our global health issues such as TB, cancer, maternal mortality and cardiac diseases. But cancer, heart issues, and even tuberculosis, issues that can be treated or cured with early diagnosis, are left unchecked. Not due to scarcity of equipment, but due to lack of diagnostic expertise.
Surely there must be a better way. Surely, healthcare can be more democratic; available to the masses.
In October of 2018, Trice Imaging, which provides a solution that securely connects ultrasound machines to the internet, expanded its reach into Asia, launching in India, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Singapore, Japan and Australia and more to come. Trice’s product, Tricefy, a cloud-based service that allows doctors to easily and cost effectively share images, videos and reports via computer, tablet and mobile phone, effectively removes the distance between patients and the specialists who are best equipped to help them.
Tricefy has been utilized in hospitals around the globe, enabling doctors to rapidly send ultrasound images and other clinical information to patients and collaborate in real time with specialists. Leading hospitals and clinics from Manhattan, New York to rural Morocco on five continents such as Texas Children’s Hospital and Mount Sinai in the United States, Karolinska University Hospital in Sweden, The University Hospital of Dresden in Germany, University Hospital in Clermont Ferrand, Tours and Trousseau have deployed the solution, saving them time and money, garnering efficiencies, and improving speed-to-diagnosis and ultimately improving clinical outcomes and saving lives. Tricefy is also used for Global research projects and associations such as the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and International Society of Ultrasound in Obstetrics and Gynecology (ISUOG).
Simple and affordable collaboration contributes to improving global health
Trice first gained market traction by allowing doctors in Europe and the US to easily send patients’ ultrasounds directly to their phones and computers, instead of printing them out, burning CDs or saving on thumb drives. This digital approach essentially took (insert ultrasound format), a proprietary and complex format, and made it something easier to share.
While delighting and empowering patients with access to the clinical information is a good cause in itself, the company’s mission is to really contribute to quality of care for people regardless of who and where they are. This means making healthcare more equally distributed, or democratized – globally.
Dr.Aditya Kusuma from Bunda Hospital Jakarta explained use cases:
Tricefy is very suitable as a data communication medium. In the past, there was no means to access images and loops for review or for additional consultations. However, now with Tricefy, I can access my images anytime and from everywhere. I really feel this is an excellent technology. I also find it very useful in situations of complex cases. Utilizing the collaboration tool to discuss with different colleagues and I believe this is a game changer
From patient sharing to clinical collaboration
Over time, the company developed Tricefy, into a comprehensive cloud platform beyond sharing. Today Tricefy solves a multiple of critical issues for hospitals and doctors:
- Remote access to clinical data anywhere from any device that makes it possible for the patient and the doctor to be thousands of miles away.
- Data Portability- Tricefy enables the patient free to bring their information to a different care provider
- Storage- hospitals shifted from storing hard copies of ultrasounds to CDs. This digitized the solution, but CDs are easily lost or damaged, records of what they hold can be impossible to find, and the format is rapidly being replaced. A cloud-based off-site archive is secure and meets compliance standards.
- Collaboration- Tricefy supports collaboration between clinicians, something that is either not done at all, or done via fax or fedex today.
- Having access to medical images and reports in the patient’s health record has historically been a major pain-points. Doctors have either had to manage multiple systems for patient records and images and reports. In some cases, images are still in paper format or being manually scanned and uploaded as pdfs into electronic medical records, a process that is labor intensive, costly and time-consuming. Tricefy integrates with electronic health records so that the clinicians can look at the patient medical history and images simultaneously in the same system.
- Compliance- the cloud-based offering meets all of the regulatory requirements in each country where it is available. This includes HIPAA, (insert alphabet soup)
Understanding local needs is mandatory in order to serve a region
Knowledge about the local health care system and long-term relationships are crucial to being able to understand and serve a market. With its launch in Asia, Trice has selected a number of experienced distribution partners.
Bratasena Maguiraharjo, Managing Director of PT Beyond Medical, Indonesia, discussed his company’s decision to become a Trice distributor in Indonesia :
With technology based on the cloud, Trice delivers a solution for hospitals to reduce the process of ultrasound scanning time, and enables them to easily and rapidly share images to doctors, colleagues, and medical centers to discuss further. It is the only solution that doesn’t need servers or even PACS systems. There is no additional cost for hardware, so it is a smart and more cost efficient solution. We believe the quality of diagnostics is higher than ever before.
Bratasena also has personal experience with Trice:
I saw my baby first on my mobile phone, thanks to Trice Technology!
Another key benefit of Trice’s approach is simple integration with ultrasound machines, including those built by GE. This was a critical differentiator for Genworks a Wipro GE Invested company and the largest independent distributor of imaging equipment in India that distributes GE products in 450 Districts. Genworks partnership with Tricefy provides cloud-connected solutions across the country and improves access and affordability for healthcare.
Ganesh Prasad, MD and CEO of GenWorks Health had this to say:
Tricefy is the only complete and compliant Ultrasound cloud solution and has the best workflow. The workflow is seamless and is integrated with the GE product line.
Tricefy is not limited to ultrasounds, and integrates with hardware from nearly any healthcare manufacturer, covering imaging devices such as MRI, CT, and more. Tricefy is currently available in 37 countries and more countries and integrations are regularly being added. Tricefy is now available to medical professionals through distributor partnerships and direct sales in Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Japan, Singapore, South Korea and Sri Lanka. Early partners throughout the continent include Genworks in India, YD in Japan, BMI in Sri Lanka, Scanmed in Singapore and Zone Imaging in Australia and New Zealand
Trice is committed to quality of care for people regardless of who and where they are. Opening operations across Asia is the next logical step in fulfilling its goal, and the company will continue to expand into new territories.