Telemedicine in India â?? Great prospect for an improved healthcare

SEP 27: Working towards quality health care ‘whenever and wherever needed’, the All-India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) here in Delhi has taken initiative in the field of telemedicine.

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The institute has developed telemedicine setup between the Institutes Dr. B. R. Ambedkar Institute Rotary Cancer Hospital with the Sher-E-Kashmir Institute of Medical Sciences, Srinagar, and the Regional Cancer Hospital, Cuttack.

At present, AIIMS has only begun cancer consultation programme between these three hospitals as a part of networking 100 hospitals. The present telecommunication technology will enable doctors from different medical institutes in sharing clinical information primarily radiotherapy, cardiology, pathology and oncology.

The concept of telemedicine though has been under discussion from a long time but India as a developing country is not in the forefront of this feature. One of the sole deeds is to reach those millions of people living in rural areas where specialised healthcare is not available.

Telemedicine technology is a kind of acquiring medical data and transmitting it another physician for medical help; so it is a kind of knowledge management. The data can be of any format images, voice or even bio signals by using tele-otoscope and tele-stethoscope. Again telemedicine also includes the most common one video-conferencing that sets a direct link between a patient, his/her doctor and a specialist from anywhere in the world. In this way it can also be worked as a great help for general physicians while consulting doctors with specialisation.

The other piece of this venture is to undertake tele-education i.e. tele-medical education, training programmes through video conferencing in all speciality departments. After the extension of this programme doctors from rural areas can directly consult with Faculty of AIIMS or with any other institutes. Hence as a whole, what the most effective outcome is treatment of more patients in less cost and time.

As more than two-third of India’s population is living in rural areas where modern medical facilities are in its premature stage telemedicine or tele-healthcare is much important to cater the increasing healthcare needs. Though there are some private hospitals in some parts of the country primarily located in urban region but a lot to be done in this regard.

Taking the example of Apollo Hospitals Group which is a pioneer in the field of Telemedicine in India, it is important for the Health Ministry along with the Ministry of Communication and Information Technology to come up with advanced telemedicine infrastructure, and also special training programme for doctors as most of our doctors are not computer savvy. As a result this new initiative can deliver and improve the quality of health care to under-served rural and urban masses.