Apollo, Isro in telemedicine deal

The Apollo Hospitals group aims to tie up with the Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) to provide telemedicine facilities.

"With the help telemedicine, Apollo Hospitals can reach patients in any part of the country. The transfer of electronic medical data (high resolution images, sounds, live video, and patient records) from one location to another can take place with the help of a variety of telecommunication technology," said K Ganapathy, director, department of telemedicine, Apollo Hospitals, Chennai. He was in Ahmedabad to addend the 92 session of Indian Science Congress.

Isro has already installed 18 V-SAT in the North East and is in process of setting more such terminals.

Telemedicine covers a growing number of medical specialities such as cardiology, emergency care, psychiatry, pathology, hematology, nephrology, radiology, dermatology, oncology, ophthalmology, orthopaedics and ENT amongst others.

"India, with a population exceeding over one billion, needs at least 800 hospitals of 250 beds per year, which would cost over Rs 25,000. We spend less than one per cent of the gross domestic product (GDP) on health sector as compared to five per cent prescribed by the World Health Organisation (WHO). Telemedicine is one of the ideal solution as the specialist doctors do not want to go to the rural areas for the lack of infrastructure," said Ganapathy.

Few of the hospitals in Chennai have already started telemedical services with the help of mobile vans. Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Chennai has fabricated low cost instrument for telemedicine costing around Rs 10,000.

Other services that telemedicine supports include disease management, epidemic management, education, home care, hospital administration, continuing medical education, patient follow ups and pre-hospital care amongst others.

Over 61 Apollo telemedicine centres are connected in different parts of the country, which include Andaman-Nicobar Islands, Aragonda, Eluru, Kohima, Agartala, Guwahati, Bhilwara, Jodhpur, Silchar, Tinsukia, Burdwan, Srinagar and Raichur amongst others. The hospital is in process of setting new telemedicine centres across the country.