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Telemedicine
Facility India |
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SPS
Apollo Hospitals launches telemedicine facility
Other Topics: ATA West 2006
- American Telemedicine Association,
Residential Telemedicine Services,
eNotes Telemedicine
Express News Service
July 12, 2006
Ludhiana, India -- SATGURU Partap Singh (SPS) Apollo Hospitals
launched the first nodal tele-medicine which was inaugurated by
Chief MinisterAmarinder Singh.
Advocating the concept of telemedicine, he said, ‘‘Remote
diagnosis through satellite or Internet is a boon for the 620
million people living in rural India. Apollo Hospitals group’s
not-for-profit arm, Apollo Telemedicine Networking Foundation (ATNF),
will oversee the development of telemedicine at SPS Apollo
Hospitals, Ludhiana.’’ |
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According to the
authorities at Apollo, telemedicine is the use of electronic
information and communication technologies to provide and
support healthcare when the participants are separated by
distance. It enables the transfer of valuable opinion and
interpretations to complex medical cases and of patient data and
images. The facility enables patients and the specialists,
irrespective of where they are, and helps in lowering the cost
of travel for patients from far-off regions to bigger centres
for medical treatment.
‘‘The launch of telemedicine by SPS Apollo Hospitals will enable
primary and secondary healthcare providers across the state to
offer better treatment to their patients,’’ said the doctors at
Apollo.
There are around 35 telemedicine centres in the country. SPS
Apollo Hospitals will integrate the primary and secondary
healthcare providers in Punjab and neighbouring states with the
following telemedicine centres across India and abroad. These
are Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Bihar,
Chhatisgarh, Gujarat, Haryana, Jammu and Kashmir, Jharkhand,
Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Mizoram, Nagaland,
Nepal, New Delhi, Orissa, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Tripura, Uttar
Pradesh, West Bengal, Kazakhastan, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and
Sudan.
SPS Apollo Hospitals Ludhiana will also be connected to Apollo
Hospitals in Chennai, Hyderabad, Delhi and Kolkata. Recognising
Apollo’s expertise in telemedicine, the Centre had invited
Apollo to be a part of the ‘Standards Committee on Telemedicine’
- a high-powered body convened by the government to herald and
spread the concept of telemedicine in India. Apollo is also
defining the standards for health informatics in India through
the ‘Information Technology Infrastructure for Health’ project.
According to Dr S.P. Singh, COO, ‘‘This is our first step
towards the implementation of telemedicine programme in northern
India after Delhi. We are progressing to connect identified
partners (secondary care hospital/healthcare providers) in
districts of Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, Haryana and Jammu and
Kashmir. This centre has been conceived as specialty centre,
which will cater to all partner centres of the district town and
in turn will be connected to our national and international
partners. Acknowledging the death rate in rural Punjab which is
7.3 as compared to the rate in urban Punjab where it is six and
that in Punjab 66 per cent of population resides in rural areas,
the programme will enable the reach of higher specialised
medical services/opinion available at the district level to the
door step of the populace where the genuine India lives.
According to Jugdiep Singh, Director, ‘‘Telemedicine is one of
the most efficient tools to take quality healthcare to the
masses. After establishing the state-of-the-art infrastructure
to service people in Ludhiana, SPS Apollo Hospitals is utilising
the development in IT and telecom to ensure that services of
similar quality are made available to people in remote centres
of Punjab as well.
According to the Director, besides the patient benefits, the
telemedicine link is extremely useful for conducting continuing
medical education (CME) programmes for the local doctors in
these regions, enabling them to upgrade their skills by
attending video-conferencing-based medical programmes offered by
specialists from bigger centres, like Apollo Hospitals in
Chennai, Hyderabad, Delhi and Kolkata. |
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