IT and telemedicine

In my last blog, I write about the general aspect of ICT and health. This week I want to use this opportunity to elaborate the role of ICT in reaching unreachable rural population in developing countries, like India. In many developing countries, telemedicine or e-medicine played vital role in remote patient monitoring and disease management. ICT has given the opportunity to practitioner; medical centers a new dimension to manage patient care, electronic records and billing (Telemedicine, 2010).

One of the well known project is run by Narayana Hrudayalaya Hospital in Bangalore, India. The hospital is run by Dr. Devi Shetty a very well known cardiologist. It has one of the largest telemedicine networks in the world, sponsored by Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO). The Coronary Care Unit networks runs through 26 locations in India and abroad provide 24 hour video consultation for heart patients from remote areas. Each unit is equipped with beds medications, ECHO machines, ECG machines and video-conferencing equipment. The basic infrastructure of telemedicine is provided by digital communication link. The patient information has been transmitted to main hub before the consultation.

Family Physicians send ECG results through normal telephone link or by web connection after scanning results by SN Informatics software. The telephone link is generally supported by internet service and IP line. The entire process takes only 10 minutes (E-Health, 2008). The project is successful only because of ICT, for thousands of people health care become reality.
The above topic will be incomplete, without discussion of GE’s frugal product “Mac 400”, a hand held electrocardiogram (ECG). According to Dr.Ashish Shah (GE), it is a masterpiece of simplification. The multiple buttons on conventional ECGs have been reduced to just four. The bulky printer has been replaced by tiny gadgets. The Mac 400 is small enough to fit in small backpack and can run on batteries. This is used by “clinics on wheel” physicians who travel to rural hospitals to test for heart disease (Economist, April 2010) . Like GE, Cisco revolutionized the web-conference consultation in health care. Web-conference has provided face-face communication between two consulting physician to reach right diagnosis, which is crucial to the success of E-medicine.

One more topic, which is close to me is the Rural Mobile Tele-ophthalmology unit run by “Sankar Nethralaya” and supported by Government of India, World diabetes Foundation, Micorvision, ISRO, etc. The mobile unit has air-conditioned consultation room with comprehensive eye check-up equipment. It has the facility to transmit digitized images of eye to the main hospital at Chennai through satellite connectivity provided by ISRO. ITC has made it possible to reach remote rural population in southern India and created awareness in the population about eye care and diabetes.

Impact of ICT on health is going beyond imagination with E-medicine. It is the use of telecommunication to provide medical information and services. E-medicine has enhanced the information flow and helped the health care professionals to reach right diagnosis to treat patients. ICT also has certain draw backs; day-day maintenance in remote areas is not without difficulties. It may take longer time to get technical support due to lack of infrastructure; there is always privacy and confidentially issues associated with E-medicine.