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Distance shrinks as medicine expands
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The facility helps the local physician interact with a specialist who is hundreds of km away from the place of the incident.
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HE WAS an Ayyappa devotee and on his way to the hilly shrine. He was about 48-year-old and was climbing up the Neelimalai hills. Just when he reached atop the hills, he developed a severe chest pain. No one was there to help that man, writhing in pain. A police constable came to his rescue and rushed him to the nearby Apollo cardiac medical centre.
Just when the doctors felt the situation was getting out of control, they opened a magic box and within minutes, the patient responded well to the treatment and then he was moved out to a city hospital for further treatment.
The box was nothing but a telemedicine facility extended to the cardiac centre on the hill.
The facility helps the local physician interact with a specialist who is hundreds of km away from the place of the incident.
This is not an isolated incident of the telemedicine facility saving a life.
"When Graham Bell called his friend, Watson, over his telephone on March 20,1876, (incidentally, the world's first telephone call), after he inadvertently spilled acid on himself, little did Bell realise that this was indeed the world's first telemedical consultation. We have come a long way to a position where even tele surgery is a reality," says K. Ganapathy, neurosurgeon, Apollo Hospitals, Chennai.
"Telemedicine is a method, by which a patient can be examined, investigated, monitored and treated, with the patient and the doctor located at different places. Tele is a Greek word meaning "distance" and Mederi is a Latin word meaning "to heal". A major goal of telemedicine is to eliminate unnecessary travelling. Acquisition, storage, display, processing and transfer of images represent the basis of telemedicine. It is fast becoming an integral part of health care services in several countries including Canada, Italy, Germany, Japan, Greece, Norway and now India," he says.
"The Apollo has proposed to establish a VSAT telemedicine link with Port Blair in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands soon. Connectivity has already been established with information centres at Guwahati and Kolkata. The tertiary care hospitals in Hyderabad, Delhi and Madurai are interconnected. Tele consultation is also available for doctors in the Middle East and other countries. Connectivity with the Apollo Hospitals at Colombo, Dhaka, Bilaspur, Erode and others is on the anvil," says Dr.Ganapathy.
"Now, around 25 hospitals located within the150-km radius are linked to the Apollo Hospitals, Madurai. Steps are also underway to link those in Dindigul, Theni, Rajapalayam, Virudhunagar, Sivakasi, Karaikudi, Thoothukudi, Tirunelveli and Nagercoil," says T.N. Sekhar, General Manager, Apollo Hospitals, Madurai.
"We offer telemedicine free of cost in pilgrim centres. Encouraged by a tremendous success of this facility in Pampa, now we have planned to install one at Velankanni," he says.
"Telemedicine has become an inseparable part of health care services in India, particularly with the Aravind Eye Care System. This video conferencing facility came to the Aravind two years ago. We use this facility not only to examine patients in distant remote villages but also for our education purposes. In fact, at the Southern Regional Ophthalmic Conference held in Chennai from August 15 to 17, this facility was effectively used to interact with the experts from Wilmer Eye Institute, Baltimore," says Kim, chief, Retina Clinic, the Aravind Eye Care System and also in charge of the Aravind Tele-ophthalmology Network.
The Aravind has a tie-up with the Wilmer Eye Institute, Baltimore and the Cornell University, New York. "Compared to the West, we have actually used this facility more effectively," said Dr.Kim.
"We have frequent discussions with our counterparts in Baltimore and New York, through this facility. Further we also interact with our doctors in Coimbatore, Theni and Tirunelveli. This helps our budding ophthalmologists at the Aravind interact with the world renowned experts at the other end thus enriching their knowledge and skills," says Dr.Kim.
"The distribution of specialists is indeed lopsided in our country. Going by a recent statistics taken in 56 cities and villages, 57 per cent of ophthalmologists are working for just 10.9 per cent of population in cities where as only 43 per cent of ophthalmologists cater to the needs of the rest living in villages. While the Ophthalmologist-patient ratio is 1:21,000 in cities, it is a mind-boggling 1:2,19,000 in villages," says Dr. Kim.
"The telemedicine facility has come as a boon for our outreach programmes. Impressed by our programmes, the Indian Space Research Organisation has agreed to provide free satellite connectivity to our programmes. Further, there is also teleophthalmology software, which has been developed with a technical support from Manmar Technologies. Any doctor anywhere in the world can seek expert opinion by downloading this software. This programme will be inaugurated on October 9, which is the World Sight Day. The whole programme is sponsored by the New York-based Acumen Fund Organisation. Orbis International had sponsored this programme in its early stages," said Dr. Kim.
T. SARAVANAN
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Metro Plus
Bangalore
Chennai
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Delhi
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