Medical News

Indian Government Invests In Telemedicine

By Andrew ⋅ August 8, 2008 ⋅  Email This Post ⋅ Post a comment

The Indian government alongside various health and public authorities have agreed to pour large amounts of financial support into expanding what they call “Telemedicine”. Telemedicine allows doctors to examine and provide guidance to patients via video link, despite being hundreds or thousands of miles away. In India healthcare can be a problem and many hospitals and doctors are found within cities, however over 60% of the country’s population are situated in rural areas and are often long distances from healthcare services. New telemedicine centres located in the more rural parts of India

Telemedicine combines both the use of two-way audio and high definition live video feeds to form an effective and practical healthcare service to those who are otherwise unreachable by medical professionals. The advantages with live video are clear, as they allow medical professionals to view injuries or other problems patients are suffering with, giving them the ability to make a much more accurate diagnosis.

A study carried out in the United States, specifically involving 222 people in remote locations of California, showed that 98% of all telemedicine-treated patients were diagnosed correctly and therefore treated effectively, whereas those treated by telephone were only treated correctly 82% of the time. One researcher said: “The results of this study show that telemedicine is efficacious for making acute medical decisions. Stroke telemedicine is widely implemented and discussed, but despite it’s dissemination, it’s efficacy has not previously been shown. Our results support the use of telemedicine to make urgent medical decisions, such as whether to use thrombolytic therapy for acute stroke.”

The scale of the funding provided by the Indian government is certainly large scale, with around 50m USD now invested into a five year plan which will be used to enhance internet connectivity, open new centres and buy newer and better telemedicine equipment.

India is leading the way in terms of telemedicine advancement and other countries including; China, Kenya, Uganda, Mozambique and Senegal have shown great interest in the new technologies being laid out by Indian health authorities.

Tags: doctors, india, telemedicine