‘Patients at remote locations to benefit from telemedicine’
The initiative has been taken to improve a patient’s clinical health status via electronic communication and technology where the availability of specialist doctors is limited
Soon people in remote rural Rajasthan will be able to consult medical experts through telemedicine, state health minister Kali Charan Saraf said on Thursday, after signing an agreement with Kolkata-based Global Health Care Systems.
Telemedicine services will be available at 100 healthcare centres across the state, including 31 district hospitals, 19 sub-divisional hospitals, six satellite hospitals and 44 community health centres, said Saraf.
“The initiative has been taken to improve a patient’s clinical health status via electronic communication and technology where the availability of specialist doctors is limited,” he said.
Telemedicine is the use of telecommunications and information technology to provide clinical health care from a distance.
The real-time technology allows healthcare professionals to evaluate, diagnose and treat patients in remote locations using telecommunication technology.
The private partner will set up a central site and team of medical experts and will provide services at the identified healthcare institutions through video conferencing, telemedicine software, medical and computer equipments, said Saraf.
“In the first phase, district hospitals, sub-divisional hospitals and satellite hospitals will be connected to telemedicine project in July this year, while in the second phase, community health centres will be connected to the central site in August 2017,” he said.
Naveen Jain, state mission director of the National Health Mission, said the central site will be operational from 8am to 8pm on six days a week with a general physician, obstetrician and gynaecologist and pediatrician.
He further said that an orthopaedician, gastroenterologist, oncologist, endocrinologist, skin and venereal disease specialists, cardiologist, nephrologists, neurologist and urologist will be available from 11am to 4pm from on specific days, he said.
The private partner will provide digital ECG, digital stethoscope, digital dermoscope, scanner for digital transmission of X-ray/CT Scan/MRI, BP instrument, pulse oxymeter, blood glucose examination, and thermometer among others, Jain said.
“Telemedicine services will help patients to reach medical experts reducing unnecessary travel time.”
Earlier health minister Saraf inaugurated a live progress report of services provided by an integrated ambulance scheme , the Skoch award gallery and a live tracking system for the 108/104 ambulance services at the state health directorate.