Healing by wire by ASHA KRISHNAKUMAR
The joint effort of Anna University and Apollo Hospitals to set up a telemedicine network shows the way in reaching specialised medicare to rural communities.
The teleconference on telemedicine, which was inaugurated by Prime Minister A.B. Vajpayee in New Delhi. Seen here is the picture of a link between Port Blair, Delhi and Chennai, taken at Sri Ramachandra Medical College and Hospital, Chennai.
WHEN Alexander Graham Bell said, “Watson, come here I want you,” on March 20, 1876, he was not only making the first telephone call but holding the first telemedical consultation, without realising it though. Bell had spilt acid on himself accidentally and wanted assistance. Since this unwitting beginning, telemedicine has come a long way, with developments in communication and information technologies making healthcare accessible across distances. Yet in a paradox typical of India, most of the 620-million-strong rural population has barely any access to basic medicare.
Celebrating its silver jubilee in a novel way, the Chennai-based Anna University, with 240 engineering colleges under its fold, set up a telemedicine network linking, to begin with, 35 of its constituent colleges in Tamil Nadu to provide high-quality healthcare to their students and, more important, to the rural communities situated in the vicinity of the colleges. The project plans to use the infrastructure base of the engineering colleges to extend hi-tech medicare to people in remote areas.
A joint effort by Anna University and Apollo Hospitals (a pioneer in telemedicine), the project also has the blessings of the Tamil Nadu government. Inaugurating the programme, Chief Minister Jayalalithaa said that this facility, the first of its kind in the country, would bring secondary and tertiary medicare to over 95 per cent of the State’s population when all the 240 affiliated colleges were networked. She said: “The world’s largest technical university, Anna University, is to show the way to reach specialised medical care to the needy in the remote areas.”
