This is the final post in my series on financially sustainable models that provide high quality healthcare to the poor. A compilation of all posts will be available to download as a PDF next week.

Healthcare for the poor is typically regarded as substandard, and it sometimes is. But a number of new initiatives are turning this assumption on its head, proving that affordable world class healthcare can be affordable to markets at the base of the pyramid.

Hi-Tech Healthcare Delivery

Hardly a day has gone by recently without a flurry of news stories about the bird flu and the inevitability of a human flu pandemic. If the locations of recent outbreaks are any indication, this pandemic will likely start in a rural developing area where healthcare and infrastructure is limited, and then spread quickly throughout an increasingly connected world.

One company has pioneered an approach to stop such a pandemic before it starts. In Peru, the for-profit Voxiva has developed and implemented a technology platform that enables medical professionals to collect health data in real-time and communicate with one another in order to effectively monitor and respond to disease outbreaks. In such a situation, active surveillance is critical to early detection. The Voxiva platform utilizes phones and the Internet to ensure that appropriate action is taken, enabling local communities to use scarce resources effectively.