|
|
Narayana Hrudayalaya Telemedicine
No. 258/A, Bommasandra Industrial Area, Anekal Taluk,
Bangalore 560 099 |
Tel: 080 - 7835203
Fax: 080 - 7835206
abhay.singavi@hrudayalaya.com |
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Introduction |
| The advancement in telecommunication and satellite communication in the recent years has experienced many fold development in India in IT enabled services, BPOs, Overseas communication, rural telephony, and also in the field of medicine. Telemedicine is the new buzz word amongst the healthcare administrators around the world and the buzz is catching fast in India too. |
|
| |
| In the last decade leading hospitals and healthcare providers in India have used telemedicine as a medium of communication between medical fraternity in seeking opinion for rendering better patient care services and sharing of knowledge base to the fellow counterparts. |
| |
| Making healthcare accessible reduces investment in health thus contributing to overall economic and social development. India faces various problems in the provision of medical services and health care, including funds, expertise and resources. To meet this challenge, the governments and private health care providers must make use of existing resources and the benefits of modern technology. Also with limited medical expertise and resources, telecommunication services have the potential to provide a solution to some of these problems. Telemedicine has the potential to improve both the quality and the access to health care regardless of the geography. It enables medical and health care expertise to be accessed from under served locations. |
| |
| In India only one-third of households are in urban areas, with two-thirds in rural areas but majority of healthcare activities and availability of healthcare facilities are present in urban areas. The advancements in healthcare and making healthcare available to many in these rural areas are still grim. The third NFHS Survey (2005 -06) reports that Sixty-eight percent of households (56% of rural households and 93% of urban households) have electricity. Fifty- five percent of households have no toilet facilities. Three-fourths of rural households have no toilet facilities. Eighty-eight percent of households use an improved source of drinking water (95% of urban households and 85% of rural households), but only 25 percent have water piped into their dwelling, yard, or plot. One-third of households treat their drinking water to make it potable; half of those that treat their water strain the water through a cloth, and almost one-third boil the water. |
| |
| The non-availability of basic facilities for maintaining lifestyle like safe drinking water, sanitation, hygienic conditions should we talk about telemedicine as an alternate source of accessing healthcare? The limitation to access healthcare by the rural population is faced with many challenges like that of the availability of doctors and trained paramedics, nurses, drugs, equipments & instruments and above all availability of a health facility with basic facilities in their neighbourhood. The RMPs and quacks will are the only source in their illness and some still depend on orthodox methods of ancient believes. Today in India while the aggregate number of doctors is 0.7 million is not very low for a developing country, only 28% of them are located in the rural areas. The government though being the single largest healthcare provider and having the largest network with many initiatives to bring about change in the health status of the country’s population falls short of making healthcare accessible to a whooping 1.1 billion Indians. |
| |
| With 83% of the total health expenditure being in the private sector, the dominant influence in the health system has been the private sector. The private sector, driven more by the impulse to maximize profit, has further skewed a system already dominated by curative initiatives, increasingly dependent on high cost and high-tech diagnostic support. |
| |
|
|
|
