Tamil Nadu   

Telemedicine project planned at Government Royapettah Hospital

Photo: K. Pichumani

LENDING AN EAR: Sankara Nethralaya chairman S.S.Badrinath (third from left), with Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi at the national Telemedicine conference in Chennai on Saturday. V.R. Venkatachalam, Chancellor, Sri Ramachandra University (second from left), Preetha Reddy, Managing Director, Apollo Hospitals (right) and K. Ganapathy, chairman, organising committee of the conference (left), are in the picture. —

CHENNAI: A telemedicine project will be inaugurated at the Government Royapettah Hospital shortly, linking government headquarters hospitals in Kancheepuram, Tiruvallur, Tiruvannamalai, Udhagamandalam and Rameswaram, Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi said here on Saturday.

Addressing the third national conference of the Telemedicine Society of India, he said upgradation of the state-of-the-art telemedicine facility at the Government General Hospital in Chennai was in progress.

The Government had signed a memorandum of understanding with Intel Technology India to implement a pilot telehealth project at the Tindivanam taluk hospital and extend it to other needy areas.

The taluk hospital at Tindivanam and a few primary health centres in Villupuram district have been linked to some of the major centres of excellence in health care. Craig Barrett, Chairman, Intel Technology India, recently met the Chief Minister and held discussions on implementation of the project.

Mr. Karunanidhi said it was essential to have facilities for medical consultation through tele-health projects, especially in remote and rural areas. Chennai could be considered the birthplace of telemedicine in south Asia with former US President Bill Clinton inaugurating the Chennai-based Apollo Hospital’s first enabled village hospital at Aragonda in Andhra Pradesh.

Since then, the reach of telemedicine had grown by leaps and bounds with more players entering the field. One hundred of the 500 institutions using telemedicine in India were located in Tamil Nadu.

Tamil Nadu Dr. MGR Medical University, in association with Apollo Hospitals, would be the first medical university in South Asia to develop a course in telemedicine exclusively for health care personnel. Mr. Karunanidhi acknowledged the role played by the Indian Space Research Organisation in supporting the wide use of telemedicine in the country.

Preetha Reddy, MD, Apollo Hospitals, said Tamil Nadu had become the Asia’s largest telemedicine provider even as India had emerged as the world’s largest provider of telemedicine services.

Hospitals must not forget their responsibility in rural areas where telemedicine was the only viable means of taking quality health care to the people. Michael Nerlich, president, International Society for Telemedicine and eHealth, said Tamil Nadu was spearheading the existing field of innovation in telemedicine.

The conference was an attempt to bring in professionals from different fields to generate solutions. He stressed on the need to evolve new business models and encourage entrepreneurship to bring telemedicine into mainstream health care.

S.S. Badrinath, chairman, Sankara Nethralaya said telemedicine was one of the best methods to reach the unreachable, poor and have-nots. He urged the State Government to make telemedicine available at district headquarters hospitals.

V.R. Venkatachalam, Chancellor, Sri Ramachandra University, elaborated on the various uses the varsity was putting telemedicine to.

With connectivity established between different nations and different States in the country, telemedicine was also being used to teach students and conduct continuing medical education programme for doctors.

K. Ganapathy, chairman, organising committee of the conference, said professionals from 23 different countries were participating in the two-day programme.

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