🫁 Oxygen Learning Series — Meet Amarpreet from Sanrai

This Wednesday, October 12, the Oxygen CoLab is hosting the third of its Learning Meetup events, in which we sit down with oxygen innovators and advocates from the programme to discuss their work, dig into their insights and learn from their experiences.

At this week’s event we’ll be hosting representatives from Sanrai & FREO2 to discuss their pilots testing new Oxygen-as-a-Service models in low resource settings. Ahead of the event we spoke to Amarpreet Rai, Sanrai’s Director of Operations & Development, to talk about Sanrai’s recent work in Punjab and how what they learned there will inform the next phase of the project.

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An oxygen concentrator subscription service

The aim of Sanrai’s pilot project was to create a kind of ‘subscription service’ for oxygen concentrators in India, replacing the existing oxygen delivery mechanisms that are particularly burdensome both from a logistical and an economic point of view.

“The most common model is still cylinders,” Amarpreet explains, “and that relies on an infrastructure that can be very challenging, particularly in the more rural areas, because someone has to fill, manage and maintain these cylinders; and they have to be refilled. If people aren’t using cylinders then they are buying the cheapest oxygen concentrators, which inevitably break and then sit in equipment graveyards.”

Sanrai’s ‘concentrator subscription service’ sees health care facilities paying a monthly rental fee for their oxygen concentrator. Crucially though, the subscription also covers any accessories that might be needed, as well as training, support and maintenance of the device. “It’s not just dropping off a box and walking away,” says Amarpreet, “that’s the key difference”.

So far, the project has succeeded in placing 43 concentrators across 15 hospitals and clinics, delivering approximately 40,000 litres of oxygen over five months. It’s also delivered a huge amount of crucial information and key learnings that will inform the next phase of the pilot.

Some of the key challenges the team faced

Data collection: “This was much harder than we had expected! When we went back and talked to some of the bigger NGOs in this space who’ve been in India for years they said ‘Oh yeah, we have this problem too… And we haven’t solved it yet!’”.

Training and education: “We thought we’d be able to go in and show how the device works, set it up for a patient and then leave, but that wasn’t the case. One round of training is not enough. You have to do it multiple times and help them fit it to a patient. Then the device really starts to be used.”

Diagnostics: “What we saw in this first phase was that some locations used thousands of litres of oxygen, while others used barely any. When we looked at it we saw that’s because they didn’t have the diagnostic tools, and just having oxygen available is not helpful unless you’re able to diagnose someone who’s hypoxic.”

Infrastructure: “What we found is that, ultimately in order to increase access to oxygen we have to take several other steps to provide the equipment to deliver that oxygen. Of course, putting that infrastructure in place is more expensive. You can’t just compare it to the existing cost structure.”

Find out more

Join us for our Learning Meetup on Wednesday when you’ll be able to hear Amarpreet talk about how her and the team are looking to significantly expand the scope of the pilot in phase two; how they’re taking the project from Punjab to one of the poorest states of India; and how they plan to use innovative diagnostic tools, train community workers to collect data, and use digital tools to deliver education and training.

Register for the event here