HP’s Danica Balazova Shares her First-Hand Experience with eHealth Centers

When HP’s Danica Balazova met Shanti in Bagbera, India, Shanti had been suffering from debilitating headaches for months, unable to get proper care in her rural village.

But after visiting an eHealth Center and using its tele-consulting capabilities to talk to a doctor, Shanti learned that the issue wasn’t as serious as she had feared—she had high blood pressure. With the right medication and diet modifications, Shanti’s headaches disappeared.

“She was so relieved because she thought the pain was never going to go away, but it was actually something fairly simple that could be easily addressed,” recalls Danica.

HP technology connects people to doctors

As the global program manager for HP’s eHealth Centers, Danica says that helping people like Shanti is by far the most rewarding part of her job—and not something she would have expected to be a part of when she joined HP 22 years ago.

She held a number of marketing and communications positions in HP Slovakia and the Central and Eastern European region before landing a Social Innovation role in 2011 that took her to India, where HP was in talks with the government and non-governmental organizations about how technology could address challenges in health care access in remote, resource-poor locations.

“There’s limited health care infrastructure in the remote regions, and there aren’t enough doctors,” Danica explains. “We realized we could create a technology solution to address all of these critical issues on the ground.”

The result of those conversations? The eHealth Center—an easily deployable, affordable solution that uses HP cloud-enabled technology to connect rural villages to doctors and specialists in urban centers.

Teaming up to do good things

Danica is now part of the Living Progress Initiatives team working to expand the reach of the eHealth Centers.

“The role requires traveling to underdeveloped, remote areas where most of the time you are out of your comfort zone,” she says. “But without this first-hand experience, you can’t fully understand the potential of the program and its impact.”

The program started as a Living Progress initiative, but it’s had such a positive response from patients and health care providers that Danica and team have been working very closely with Technology Services in India, as well as the Enterprise Services mobility team and the Printing and Personal Systems Group to make this solution part of our commercial offering. 

And while she’s excited to see how governments, hospitals and private companies will use the eHealth Center technology in the future, Danica says that stories like Shanti’s are what keep her motivated.

“You see these examples, and you tell yourself, ‘We’re doing a good thing.’”

This article is part of our series on unusual jobs at HP. Do you have an unusual job? Let us know and you could be profiled on HP News Now!