National Telemedicine Users' Meet 2007
AK sangal,Group Director,COSSAG/DECU

Background

ISRO’s space-systems based telemedicine programme which started in the year 2001-2002, has successfully reached a stage of maturity in connecting the remote/rural district hospitals across the country to the speciality hospitals located in cities for consultation and treatment creating a new system of medical practice for delivering healthcare to the needy and underserved population.

ISRO’s telemedicine pilot project has expanded feom just five nodes in 2001 to the present 225 nodes consisting of 184 remote/district/medical college/mobile hospitals connected to 41 super speciality hospitals in different cities through ISRO’s satellites. Through network tele-consultation by superspecialist has already been provided to more that 2.25 lakh patients in the country. More than 60% of these consultations were for peripheral ophthalmic care. The network has also 8 mobile VSAT vans fully equipped with medical equipments. It has now paved way for planning a national level adoption by Govt. of India with the formation of the National Task Force by Ministry of Health & Family Welfare (GOI).  With the initial thrust on technology and connectivity we have gained wide experience in the implementation of technology based healthcare delivery system using satellite communication and we are entering the operational phase of healthcare delivery integrating the healthcare administration, government, doctors, technologists and even insurance agencies.

Considering the encouraging results and the daunting task of enhancing the growth of telemedicine in the coming years, a two-day “National Telemedicine Users’ Meet” was held during May 3-4, 2007 at ISRO, Ahmedabad with the participation of the Health Planners, Technocrats, Doctors and Administrators to support future expansion, sustainable growth and utilization.

National Telemedicine User Meet – 2007 was organised  under the auspices of DECU and SAC at Ahmedabad.  The main objective of the meet was to obtain user feedback on the operation and utilisation issues so as to ensure sustainable operation of space-based Telemedicine network including the VRC Telemedicine. The User meet was inaugurated by Dr.G. Madhavan Nair, Chairman, ISRO and Dr. S.S. Badrinath, Chairman Emeritus, Sankara Nethralaya and President, Telemedicine Society of India was the guest of honour.

The User meet was attended by more than 200 invitees including about 75 user participants representing about 24 states from different parts of India, covering the remote rural district hospitals and the super speciality hospitals.  The User meet was aimed at getting feedback from the users for overall planning of the national Telemedicine system using SatCom as the major backbone and to integrate the efforts of multiple healthcare service providers. This could help ISRO and various stakeholders towards further understanding the operational issues and provide insight into the future course of action in terms of evolving operational and sustainable methodologies.

 

Programme Organisation

The programme for the User Meet was organised into plenary session followed by the technical sessions on operations, experience and feedback. While the plenary session provided the overview of the ISRO’s Telemedicine and VRC programme followed by the applications of Telemedicine related to tele-consultation, CME and Mobile tele-health was presented by some of the prominent speciality hospitals from different parts of India. During the technical sessions on “operations, experience and feedback”, the various users from different parts of India i.e., the regions of north, south, east, west and far flung areas of J&K, North East and Islands, were presented.  A separate technical session covering guidelines, management and future direction was also conducted.  An expert panel consisting of technocrats, doctors, administrators and service providers had detailed discussions in the concluding session. 

 

 
 

Observation / Conclusion

During the various presentations by the different users from remote hospitals and the speciality hospitals, it was concluded that ISRO has put in great efforts in bringing Telemedicine/e-health to a level playing ground in the country and this should be further extended to the primary health centre level. While the issues related to operations and utilizations could be further addressed and solved appropriately it was generally expressed by one and all that the development of Telemedicine in the country which is spearheaded by ISRO is a significant milestone and efforts towards bringing Telemedicine/e-health into the mainstream of healthcare delivery system in the country. Further it was emphasized by one and all that Telemedicine is an important technology based healthcare delivery system which is essential for a country like India and will benefit the remote and rural population in terms of providing cost effective and improved healthcare services to the needy and the underserved.  Hence there should a thrust by all the agencies to usher in full scale services through Telemedicine in the country.