Technology is now changing our lives every seconds and take it to a new level. We have invented and developed technologies to make the best of our lives. It changes our thinking, lifestyle and encouraging us to do things differently, faster and in a better way. Technological developments and improvements over the past few years have brought incredible changes in this era and almost every industry is affected with this technological evolution. While technology advancements are changing every sector, the sector of healthcare is experiencing magnificent development.

Enormous technological developments in healthcare sector have not only saved vast lives but also improved the quality of human life for even more. Bangladesh has made remarkable improvement in health sector though being a resource poor country that can be a good example for other developing in the world. As technology touches every sector, our healthcare services is also showered with the blessings of technology advancements. With huge population, the demand of reforms in terms of structure and process of healthcare services are also increasing. As a result the old models became out of date and the emergence of digital transformation to foster efficiency, and consistent quality in this sector is growing gradually. According to a study of leading British medical journal “The Lancet”, Bangladesh is ahead of India, Pakistan, Nepal and Afghanistan in providing access to quality healthcare to citizens. Bangladesh, however, fell behind Sri Lanka and China in this sector.

Healthcare and medical startups:

There are several numbers of mobile application services that facilitated by providing information on medicines, doctor appointment, nearby hospitals and so on.

Doctorola:it is a popular local healthcare startup that helps to find and book respective doctor’s appointments on time.More than two hundred hospitals and thousands of doctors are currently using the platform to deliver their services.

Jolpei:  the company has over 2000 verified doctors in their network and over 4,000 registered users. They also provide health advices in their website by getting feedbacks from users through chat box.

CMED: CMED has developed an ecosystem of medical devices powered by a cloud-based health monitoring system. These smart medical devices are connected and controlled via an accompanying mobile application and allow to have better security, data transmission than traditional health monitoring systems.

Critical link: It is a Dhaka based e healthcare services that offered emergence trained volunteer in the accident spots via its mobile app.

Aponjon: it is a mobile and sms based digital healthcare system designed for pregnant women, new mothers, and families.

Doctorkoi: it features the database of doctors and hospitals. It has medical ERP features that helps to track patient data.

Healthprior21.com: an online health portal offers health tips, news and an ebook library and ecommerce website for lending health products and drugs.

Tonic: Its purpose is an extension of Telenor Group’s vision of “Empowering Societies” and its commitment to Asia as the group continually explores new ways to harness technology for the betterment of lives and  communities. 

All these healthcare and medical startups are actively working to improve and develop the access, cost, and quality of healthcare services for all the people of Bangladesh. They are trying hard and soul to educate rural and urban people, working for maternity health and scheduling appointments.Technology in healthcare sector not only enhance patient knowledge and provide solutions but also provide wide scope for the healthcare professionals.

Prospect of Healthcare Sector

Depending on the immense technology advancements, the opportunity of healthcare sector is huge. Students can be a health information system analyst, monitoring and evaluation specialist, consultant, trainer, project manager, researcher, academician, application specialist, medical information officer, clinical data analyst, health informatics specialist, public health informatics specialist, clinical coordinator or any other professionals relevant with this sector.

The sector has huge potential of career prospect in the government and military setup, NGOs, UN organizations, healthcare delivery institutes, medical device and technology companies, medical software companies, healthcare consulting firms, insurance companies, public health organizations and academia.

Government initiatives for healthcare sector is commendable including health worker training facilities for increasing number of graduates and increasing rural health facilities. Moreover, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare prepared its new sector program called The Health, Population and Nutrition Sector Development Program (HPNSDP). Main objective of this program is to develop an HRH plan, create a functional HRH Information System (HRIS), scaling up the production of critical health workers, introduce incentive packages to deploy and retain critical health workers in remote and rural areas, addressing the challenge of skilled birth attendance by training community-based SBAs and nurse and streamlining the promotion of nurses.

Challenges in Healthcare Sector of Bangladesh

Bangladesh suffers from both a shortage of and geographic mal-distribution of human resource of healthcare. Most of the health workers are concentrated in urban secondary and tertiary hospitals. But a huge percentage of people live in rural area and most of them are not aware of using technologies. Other factors such as,

Overall centralized health system.Weak governance structure and regulatory framework

Weak management and institutional capacity in the

Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.

Inefficient allocation of public resources and shortage of HRH.

High turnover of health workers and poor maintenance of health facilities and medical equipment.