Aiming to bridge the supply-demand gap of doctors and patients from rural India, the Union Health Ministry has prepared an over Rs 100-crore plan to link all the super-specialty Government hospitals across the country through telecommunication and broadband.
The integration aims to provide tele-counselling to patients at remote areas, said a senior health Ministry official adding that the project is part of the Ministry’s various e-health initiatives being undertaken to reach out to the maximum people in the health sector.
He said that under the National Medical College Network, government medical colleges in the country having national knowledge network will be linked so that larger number of patients get tertiary-level care.
“The medical colleges will work as resource centres and Government hospitals will be attached to them. Besides, special facilities for treatment of various serious diseases would also be developed at medical colleges,” said the official.
He also said that the project of Rs 107 crore will soon come up before the Empowered Finance Committee for its approval and after that work will be initiated. We are in the process of identifying the hospitals. Soon, even private hospitals will also be invited to join the hands for better health services to the poor patients.
Currently, the health Ministry has launched various e-initiatives such as Epicentre (Nikshay) which is used for TB programme data reporting by Revised National Tuberculosis Control Programme. Similarly, while Strategic Information Management System is used for HIV/AIDS data reporting by National AIDS Control Organisation, Mother Child Tracking System (MCTS), under NRHM tracks health of mother and children.
The official hoped that in view of acute shortage of physicians, nurses and lab staff especially in rural India, telemedicine could prove to be a game changer by meeting the demand of the patients.