Like the term ‘medicine’ and ‘healthcare’ telemedicine seldom refers to provision of clinical services, medical administration, experiments and procedures. Telemedicine can be a generic term that is employed to outline numerous aspects of healthcare at a distance. It is the use of electronic information to communicate technologies to provide and support healthcare when distance separates the participants.
Benefits of telemedicine:
1. Reduce the inconvenience and price of patient transfers.
2. Reduce the inessential period of time for health professionals
3. To eradicate the distance barriers and improve access to quality health care services.
4. Providing facilities to patients and rural practitioner.
5. Telemedicine is not so costly. Anyone can afford it.
6. It helps in providing facilities in rural areas.
7. It helps in providing coordination among medical professionals.
There are two types’ Telemedicine systems in India. The first, called store and forward is used to transfer digital images from one location to another. Teleradiology, telepath logy and teledermatology are few examples. The other widely used technology, the two way interactive television, is used when a face to face consultation in necessary. The Telemedicine system has been installed in the School of Tropical Medicine, Kolkata and two districts hospitals. In west Bengal, two hospitals where telemedicine centers have been established are the First Coronary Center unit inaugurated in Siliguri district hospital, west Bengal on 24 June, 2001 and Bankura sammilani hospital.
In the past two years, the pilot project on Telemedicine in Kolkata has already provided 10,000 teleconsultations.It does not require too much of a stretch of imagination to realize the telemedicine will soon be just another way to see a health professional. Time alone will tell that Telemedicine is a forward step or a backward direction. By- Medha Choudhary
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