By Matthew Jack
A group of University of Iowa students will be India-bound this winter to set their sights on one of the world’s best eye clinics.
Kristy Walker, the director of clinical applications at University of Iowa Health Care Information Systems, and her husband Bob Walker, a professor in the Tippie College of Business, will be hosting a course during UI’s study India Winterim abroad program.
They will take students to the heart of one of the most successful eye clinics in the world — located in southern India.
Bob Walker said one of the attractions of the hospital was its groundbreaking business model, which provides very inexpensive care — as low as the equivalent of about one dollar — to patients who cannot afford more expensive procedures.
The hospital provides care ranging from simple diagnoses to cataract surgery.
UI senior Mary Heer, who was selected for the program, said she was motivated to apply by her desire to build connections “away from the desk.”
“It’s not forced,” she said. “It’s more natural.”
As a communications studies major also pursuing an entrepreneurial management certificate, Heer said she feels her education is missing an interpersonal component.
“We’re entrepreneurs from America trying to understand the people,” she said.
Bob Walker, describing his own goals for the trip, praised the innovative business model of the clinic, and said he wants his students to offer their own suggestions to improve the efficiency of the hospital at the conclusion of the trip.
Because patient expenses are so low, survival of the hospital depends on volume.
“They want to be known as the McDonald’s of eye surgery,” Bob Walker said. “Billions and billions served.”
The hospital has a groundbreaking telemedicine program, with technology that allows clinicians to provide care to rural parts of the country where it may be difficult for patients to reach a hospital or clinic.
Patrick Brophy, a pediatric kidney specialist at UI Hospitals and Clinics, is the current leader of UI eHealth, which allows patients to receive around-the-clock care for minor issues that can be addressed over video calls.
Kristy Walker was a core member of the team who created UI’s eHealth service. She said she hopes to bring some of the Indian hospital’s successful practices home, where clinicians can apply them to rural Iowan communities.
UI’s telemedicine practices have greatly reduced admissions to the hospital and the emergency department.
But telemedicine brings its own challenges.
Interstate regulation of medical care is also heavily restrictive of eHealth practices.
“One of our biggest challenges is to have regulations that protect patient information but don’t restrict the ability to deploy technology that will improve healthcare,” he said.
Brophy cited practices in under-developed countries as a motivator for innovation within the United States.
Medical devices, such as electrocardiography machines that record patients’ heart rates, have been optimized for developing countries to be portable and very inexpensive out of necessity — but similar devices can sell in the United States for tens of thousands of dollars.
“There’s some really phenomenal things happening but they’re really market disruptive,” Brophy said. “There’s a real pushback for people to allow those companies to come in here.”
Faster and more reliable Internet access has allowed similar technologies to thrive in other rural areas of the United States.
“There’s other rural states that have very strong networks; we don’t have that,” said Brophy.
Students participating in the Walkers’ course want to be part of a greater movement to make telemedicine more widely practiced and accepted in the U.S.
Brophy believes that’s a core part of this program.
“I think if there’s a good faith effort on a national program in terms of defining health, we’ll get where we need to be,” he said.
