Current Telemedicine Infrastructure, Network, Applications in India

摘要

India is a vast country of 1.4 billion population occupying an area of 3,287,268 sq. km. It consists of 29 states and 6 Union Territories governed by a federal system. There is no national health insurance policy for the country. Government supported healthcare delivery follows a three tier system and is the primary responsibility of each state. It has been observed that there is a great deal of disparity in quality and access to healthcare between urban and rural regions. This healthcare divide needs to be bridged since most of the Indian population live in rural areas. Telemedicine is an emerging Information and Communication enabled health technology which has the potential to facilitate access to healthcare in underprivileged population if absorbed into existing healthcare delivery system. The scale of e-health services in India has been very small so far considering it's size, mostly limited to medical transcription, health awareness through portals, telemedicine, hospital management system and customer service using the internet. Telemedicine system consists of customized medical software integrated with computer hardware, along with medical diagnostic instruments connected to communication media like PSTN (Public Switch Telephone Network), ISDN (Integrated Services Digital Network) or VSAT (Very Small Aperture Terminal). Both government and private agencies are venturing into Tele-healthcare by providing hardware and software solutions. Tele-health industry is coming up and policy and standard issues are getting addressed. Government efforts are directed towards setting up standards and defining IT enabled healthcare infrastructure in the country. Recently in the year 2005 the Ministry of Health Government of India has constituted a National Task Force on Telemedicine. Human resource development in e health field is also realised.