TELEMEDICINE : A BOON AND THE PROMISE TO RURAL INDIA

Telemedicine is an upcoming field in health science arising out of the effective fusion of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) with Medical Science having enormous potential in meeting the challenges of healthcare delivery to rural and remote areas besides several other applications in education, training and management in health sector. Telemedicine can play an important role to provide healthcare facilities to the victims of natural disasters such as earthquake, tsunami, tornado, etc and man-made disaster such as war, riots, etc. Telemedicine technology can be applied to provide home health care for elderly or underserved, homebound patients with chronic illness. The basic system needs hardware, software and telecommunication link. However some challenges like physician/patient acceptance, reliability, accessibility, trained manpower, legal and ethical issues are still of concern. Experts have time and again suggested that if the vision of "Health for All" is to be achieved by 2020, India will have to pump in 6% of its GDP in the health care sector. At the same time, technology-enabled health care networks can play a huge role by bridging the distance between doctors and patients through Internet and othertelecommunication technologies. Some of the major players in the path of telemedicine in India at present include Narayana Hrudayalaya, Apollo Telemedicine Enterprises, Asia Heart Foundation, Escorts Heart Institute and Aravind Eye Care.