Aren’t Technological Choices Central to Designing Health Systems.

ABSTRACT

This paper argues that delivery of technology-based preventive, promotive and curative care is one of the central tasks of any health-care system and therefore it forms one of the central pivots for rational structuring/re-structuring of a health-care system. The development of our public health system has, historically, adopted health technologies (HT) uncritically and thereby not explicitly developed institutional mechanisms to assess them for rational choice. Determinants of HT policy choices and structuring of a service delivery system based on that are discussed with examples of modern low cost HT, technologies of codifi ed health knowledge systems other than the modern and local health traditions. Various forms of institutional structures for HT assessment and R and D using a comprehensive primary health-care approach are suggested.