Field Site Development
We currently have a field site in the Thanjavur district of Tamil Nadu where we will be testing our envisaged healthcare model that includes innovative infrastructure and alternate human resource options for delivering health-care services. Three villages in Thanjavur district have been selected as our pilot sites. As a pre-launch exercise, we are conducting a census survey that has been approved by our Institutional Review Board. The survey is divided into two parts - Non Invasive and Invasive. The Non Invasive part has two sets of questionnaires - one at the household level, that delves into details concerning the health, employment, financial condition and expenditures of members of the household, while the other attempts to gather information pertaining to women's health. The Invasive part of the survey entails testing blood samples from subjects by trained medical nurses and using the results as indicators of the existing health status of the local communities. These data will be critical in understanding problems and needs that are unique to this geography but also for the evolution and scale up of our healthcare model for the future.

We plan to expand our field site within and beyond Tamil Nadu over the next several years. Over the next few years, we will scale up our current field site in Tamil Nadu to 40 villages in Thanjavur district and have 3 separate field sites in different regions of the country and subsequently expand to 6 field sites to have a more comprehensive coverage of the country. The field sites will be different in all key parameters providing excellent experimental grounds for testing new healthcare technologies and interventions.

Back to Epidemiology