While the city has acquired a reputation as a health hub, it is ironic to see that residents from neighbouring districts cannot utilise medical benefits for which people from other countries traverse thousands of kilometres.
To bridge this gap between rural and urban areas in providing the best healthcare facilities, government hospitals, in collaboration with the Karnataka Telemedicine Trust, will take up telemedicine in an organised manner.
With medical expertise in place, the challenge lies in reaching out with the help of technology to those on the neighbouring districts. Though there are eight centres in the city at present which provide specialty and superspecialty consultations to cases in 32 centres at the district and taluk levels, this facility is still not being fully utilised.
To strengthen the network, the Telemedicine Trust is organising Continuing Medical Education (CME) for doctors and a new breed of telemedicine technicians.
“This will involve local people from the districts and taluks who are trained at the centres here on ways to utilise this technology which can revolutionise healthcare in rural areas,” said Dr Raju, joint director in charge of the Telemedicine Trust.
This project involves the department of health and family welfare, Isro and super-specialty hospitals. But in the last three years of being set up, so far only around 30,000 people have utilised the facility. Consequently, authorities are now trying to strengthen the technical know-how of the stakeholders involved, so that the project can be fully utilised.
“The CMEs will help nodal officers at the district level to access this facility in an optimum way. We already have the expertise. It is just a question of reaching out to more people.
With the help of this facility the doctors here can read ECG reports, observe scans and provide consultation for specialty and super-specialty cases to help patients in remote areas access expert advice from the health hub,” said Dr Vani Ravikumar, nodal officer, Telemedicine Center, Bowring Hospital.
Deccan Chronicle