Roche signs MoU with VinCense to augment access to diabetes care in Tamil Nadu

New Delhi: Roche has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with VinCense, a digital health monitoring offering by MedIoTek Health Systems.

Under the terms of the agreement, the two companies aim to implement 3 programmes in Madurai district of Tamil Nadu state (i) screening 100,000 individuals over the next two years for diabetes, hypertension, obesity etc. (ii) intervention for uncontrolled diabetes mellitus management (iii) intervention for tuberculosis – diabetes mellitus co-morbidity management.

The partnership will use comprehensive integrated digital health solutions to drive early detection, intervention and care continuum in the state.

As per the ICMR-INDIAB-17 study conducted in 2023 by the Indian Council of Medical Research, the prevalence of diabetes and other metabolic NCDs in India is a growing concern with most Indian states witnessing an increasing incidence, spelling serious implications for the nation1. An urgent action with state-specific initiatives and interventions is thus needed to arrest the rapidly rising epidemic of metabolic NCDs in India.

To address this, Roche and VinCense successfully conducted a pilot between December 2022 and September 2023 in collaboration with the Directorate of Public Health, Tamil Nadu, focusing on NCD screening and management in the Madurai Corporation Urban Primary Health Centres (UPHCs). The pilot phase saw screening of 67,370 individuals across the Madurai district out of which 16.6% people were identified to be at risk for diabetes and attached to the public healthcare system. Learnings from this pilot will bring efficiency and scalability to set new standards for accessible, inclusive, and technology-driven healthcare.

Talking about the partnership, Omar Sherief Mohammad, Cluster Head – India, Middle East & Africa, Roche Diabetes Care, said “At Roche, we believe in forming partnerships in the communities to use the power of collective impact in creating sustainable improvements to health and healthcare systems. Our approach is to bring a holistic, patient-centric approach to diabetes management by leveraging accessible and adaptable digital health platforms that can be used as a model in healthcare initiatives across the country.”

“We are excited to partner with VinCense to develop a robust technology-driven healthcare delivery platform. We are confident that this platform will support the government’s National Digital Health Mission which aims to create a comprehensive digital healthcare ecosystem to collate digital health records in order to drive reforms in healthcare delivery.”, he added.

This partnership integrates Roche’s ability to drive large scale public healthcare programmes with like-minded partners with cutting-edge technology brought in by the VinCense mHealth Platform. This will enable a holistic registration of vital health details like an individual’s height, weight, BMI, pulse rate, oxygen level, blood pressure, ECG, and blood glucose, on a centralised digital platform. The information will then be used to generate customized dashboards to facilitate detailed understanding of health situations hence improving outcomes. At a community level, a centralised repository of this health data for a district will help design need-based healthcare programmes. Under the intervention programmes, the patients identified with diabetes mellitus and tuberculosis-diabetes comorbidities will be brought under comprehensive care to help manage their diabetes condition in the long term.

Speaking about the partnership, Sharmila Devadoss, Managing Director of MedIoTek Health Systems, added “At MedIoTek Health Systems, our focus has always been on leveraging state-of-the-art technology to improve health outcomes for communities. By joining hands with Roche, we believe that this integration of cutting-edge technology will enable comprehensive recording of essential health information and development of personalized dashboards for deep health insights. Besides being a central depository of individual medical data, it offers a conducive environment for disease control thus enabling early diagnosis and care leading to better community health status.”

By harnessing the power of technology and data integration, Roche aims to make diagnostic services affordable and accessible to the masses. The digital healthcare platform offers agility and easy scalability as early adopter states can pick up the solutions with minimal process reforms, deploy them as pilots, and scale them. Also, this allows the local technology ecosystem to create innovations on top of the quick deployments. The bigger picture speaks to scale; effective modeling and innovation catalysis in healthcare delivery worldwide remains key in realizing all these.