|
    
|
|
News
An
Inspiration for China
The Monadnock Ledger-Transcript, Aug. 31, 2006 ANTRIM,
N.H. -- Four years ago, architect and entrepreneur Egon Ali Oglu was rushed to the emergency room at Monadnock Community Hospital after suffering a heart attack. He has come a long way since then, thanks in large part to the education and treatment he has received at the hospital’s Bond Wellness Center. Having been involved with the business side of such facilities in the past, Ali Oglu was in a unique position to appreciate the system that was helping him. Now he is hoping to use his wide-ranging design and business experience to extend a similar system of care to residents of
China. His dilemma was how to extend a high level of interactive care and health education not only to urban Chinese, but to the great many rural residents who have limited access to modern health care. His solution melds state-of-the-art technology with old-fashioned doctoring in a medical structure that radiates outward from what will be the first privately-owned major medical facility in China, including a 200-bed hospital, a variety of high-tech laboratories, a wellness center with rehabilitation facilities and a computer/communication/administration center.
The heart of the operation, however, and Ali Oglu’s key innovation, is the computer and communication center, which will serve not only as the complex’s information management network, but also as a communication portal allowing the facility to provide care and information to distant patients. The patients may communicate and transmit crucial data such as blood pressure, temperature, heart and respiration rates to care providers via a small hand-held electronic device. An educational, interactive website will provide essential health and medical information, as well.
A series of small care clinics will be established in outlying areas, to facilitate patient education and disease screening, and to provide basic first aid. These clinics will be connected to the larger facility through computers, and the entire system will be supported by solar voltaic power cells to ensure reliability.
At its essence, the structure is an attempt to replicate some of the Monadnock area’s medical structure, with the hospital and wellness center at the core, and a network of affiliated physicians providing primary care. Perhaps most important, though, is the educational and illness-prevention model provided by Ali Oglu’s experiences at the Bond Wellness Center.
“The people and message of Monadnock Community Hospital is very close to my heart,” said Ali Oglu. “I think a great deal of their efforts, and I think that the Wellness Center is a pioneering key in the way people approach caring for themselves. It puts forward a very healthy attitude, and is a new kind of medical facility, that does not just serve the public in case of emergency, but actually works to keep them from getting sick in the first place.”
The project has received rave reviews from Chinese officials thus far, and Ali Oglu is finalizing negotiations with the Greater China Corporation of New York City, which will act as investment bankers on the nearly $200 million project. Construction is tentatively scheduled to begin in spring or summer 2007.
The scope of the project is daunting, but Ali Oglu brings a solid and varied background to the task.
A native of Ukraine, Ali Oglu was educated in Germany. A World War II refugee, he arrived in the United States in 1950 and became a citizen four years later. He served in the 94th Artillery Division of the U.S. Army, and earned an MBA and a doctorate in building systems technology.
He has been involved in the design of all manner of buildings and facilities, ranging from private homes to dormitories and a stadium at Dartmouth College, from public schools to cinemas, from a new clubhouse for Foxboro Race Track to Kidbrook, an entire town in the United Kingdom.
He has a long history of identifying problems and designing solutions, some of which have led to the establishment of companies like Envirodesign, an architectural firm specializing in environmentally sustainable designs, which he still runs, and Componoform Inc., a publicly held corporation providing an economical pre-cast concrete building system.
When he isn’t working, Ali Oglu enjoys photography and painting, and his work has been exhibited locally at Sharon Arts Center and the Jaffrey Historical Society. Fluent in Russian, German and English, he likes to travel and meet people.
“In the fall of 2004,” he said, “I went to China to see for myself what the medical facilities there were like and how medical education is handled there. I met some wonderful doctors and other people in the field, and we shared thoughts and ideas.”
He returned home convinced there is a need for a new kind of care in a country of 1.3 billion people.
“The buildings were modern, but not necessarily what was behind them,” said Ali Oglu. There is an ever-increasing middle class there that wants care more along the lines of what we have become accustomed to here, and that they can’t get from their current, government-operated facilities.”
Although many still live without land-line telephones, cell phones have revolutionized communication in China, a phenomenon that prompted Ali Oglu’s thoughts in the direction of an electronic device that would store diagnostic information that could be retrieved by or transmitted to doctors.
“That is the key to the whole process,” he said. “Doctors are able to retrieve information quickly in case of emergency, when they need it most and, under current conditions, when it is least likely to be available to them. It is also part of the larger system of prevention of illness through public education in health care, hygiene and nutrition.”
The problem is easily among the most difficult Ali Oglu, now in his mid-70s, has ever tried to tackle. As such, it also promises to be the most rewarding.
“China is hosting the Olympics in 2008 and a business expo in 2010,” he said. “It seems like there is a real meeting of East and West going on. I think that this project can be a part of that. People in Peterborough don’t always realize how special what we have here is. The reception has been great and the hope is that the facility will be duplicated throughout China.”
|
