With the State health department struggling long to provide minimum health facilities for the nine hill districts where 35 lakh of 1.1 crore people of the State reside, the tele- electro cardio gram report (ECG) device, conceived by the scientists of Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, can prove a boon for the people who throng the Government-run hospitals and other facilities if it is introduced.
The State of affairs at the Government hospitals and primary health care centres is grim with acute shortage of doctors and specialists. According to the State health department sources, Uttarakhand has a shortage of over 52 per cent doctors and 73 per cent specialists at present, leaving majority of the population deprived of proper healthcare. Those with the heart disorders are in a pitiable plight as the Government-run facilities lack the rudimentary medical equipment to provide the simple monitoring reports like ECG on time to help the patients get necessary medication before the disorder turns critical.
The condition in the plain cities like Haridwar is no better either. The doctors being scarce, the private and Government hospitals are bursting on their seams any normal day, not to mention the time of fairs and fests when the floating population sees a huge surge. With the Rural Health Centres in the villages of the district being hard pressed for even simple medical equipment, a paramedical staff is left to handle cardiac emergencies by taking ECG graphs, transferring data to the hospitals through phone and taking opinion of the doctors.
A normal ECG machine costs anything from Rs 25,000 to Rs 1 lakh, but a tele ECG machines costs Rs 4000. The technology has been transferred to some companies based in Delhi and Pondicherry for making more such devices. The research centre is also looking for more such organisations which can develop and take the device in the service of the common people. This compact low-cost portable tele-electrocardiogram (ECG) machine of the size of a credit card is controlled by a mobile or a laptop and through an app the graphs are generated.
Giving the details about the machine, the scientific officer from BARC Rajesh Kumar Jain said while talking to The Pioneer, “This pocket-sized machine can be recharged via a mobile charger and data can be transmitted using mobile network at whatsapp or multi-media anywhere in the world to the specialists concerned. The machine currently works on an Android-platform and can be used in conjunction with any smartphones. Around 300 ECG reports can be generated on a single charge.”
It can be of utmost use in the rural areas where critical cardio care facilities are scarce and power cuts are frequent, he added.
Speaking to The Pioneer, a city- based physician Dr. Sanjay Shah said, “In the age of personal monitoring where people prefer technologies to help them monitor their body parameters themselves, this tele-ECG can act as a futuristic device.”
This machine would help the patients to continue his work at his place while the doctor can keep a tab on the person’s health through mobile and can advise him for medication accordingly over the phone, said Shah. This would also decrease the load on resources of the hospitals that can cater to more demanding patients, he added.