To facilitate deposition and recording of evidences of doctors, medical officers and experts in various court cases, the Punjab Government is all set to provide video-conferencing facility in 100 health institutions of the State Health and Family Welfare Department.
Approving the project, the State Health and Family Welfare Minister Surjit Kumar Jyani said that video-conferencing facility would help doctors in recording their evidences without appearing in the court that would enable them to devote more time in providing healthcare to the patients in the hospitals.
Jyani said: “Video-conferencing facility in 100 health institutions of the State — including District Hospitals, all Sub-Divisional Hospitals and selected strategically located Community Health Centres — is likely to be set up by the end of this year. As a time-gap arrangements, it has been decided that video conference facility available through NICNET at district headquarters would be availed for this purpose.”
“Civil Surgeon concerned and the principals of Government Medical Colleges at Amritsar and Patiala shall be the nodal officers for coordinating recording of evidence of medical officers or experts in each district through this system,” said the Minister.
“Whenever a doctor receives a summon for recording his or her evidence in any case, he or she shall immediately inform the civil surgeon or Government Medical College principal who shall then get in touch with the Systems Officer of the respective district court and request for scheduling of evidence through video-conferencing,” said Jyani.
The State Health director Dr Karanjit Singh said that the Civil Surgeon and the principals will intimate the Director Health and Family Welfare and the Director Medical Education and Research about the number of evidences of the medical officers or experts recorded through the video-conferencing every month.