VISAKHAPATNAM: Apollo Group of Hospitals launched telemedicine facility in Visakhapatnam and other cities on Wednesday by tying up with Reliance Infocomm.

As per the tie-up, Apollo will leverage Reliance Infocomm's nationwide chain of 240 WebWorlds in 105 cities to offer high quality health care. The WebWorlds will offer access to the Apollo Telemedicine Networking Foundation (ATNF).

ATNF head K. Ganapathy, Apollo director Sangita Reddy and Reliance Group chief executive officer Sarup Chowdhary were present.

`A new era'

Inaugurating the facility, Apollo group chairman Pratap C. Reddy said that the combination of Apollo's 80 telemedicine stations and Reliance's 240 WebWorlds would usher in a new era in the healthcare system of the country. Through videoconferencing, medical records, including images, will be digitised at the WebWorlds and transmitted to the central server. Later, at an appointed time, the doctor will interact with the patient and his relatives.

Live demo

During a demonstration telecast at eight cities, including Visakhapatnam, doctors from New Delhi and Hyderabad were shown examining two patients in Tirupati and Bhubaneswar through video-conferencing. Interacting with mediapersons, Dr. Reddy said that their main objective was to offer super speciality care in remote areas at an affordable cost.

Expressing concern at the high incidence of heart ailments, he said that as per the projections, 50 per cent of world's heart patients would be in India by 2012. People in the 35-40 age group of 35-50 would be more vulnerable, he added.

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