Telemedicine – “The Need of the Hour”

Ms. V. Vidhya, Assistant Professor, Department of MBA, Sankara College of Science and Commerce

      Telemedicine is the delivery of health and health related services like medical care, patient health information, diagnosis, treatment, prevention of disease and injuries via telecommunication and digital communication technology. In India where we have the highest population in person healthcare is becoming a challenging task nowadays especially in rural areas, they need to travel long distance to obtain consultation and treatment. Telemedicine / Telehealth helps in reducing the distance and cost for the patients who needs medical advice. Telemedicine is not a new concept to the medical field. It has its origin when ISRO initiated the Telemedicine in India at 2001 in collaboration with Chennai Apollo hospitals by linking it with Apollo rural hospital at Aragonda village, AP. ISRO, MOHFW, Department of Information Technology (DIT), Ministry of External affairs and state governments played a major role in initiating the Telemedicine in India.

Most of the people in India have access to telemedicine with the help of mobile phones and computers. As the accessibility has improved the rural and semi urban population can connect with the healthcare providers easily. Medical devices like blood pressure monitors, glucose level checker can be used to monitor the vitals by the care givers. Clinicians can gather medical information online and decide on diagnosis and treatment without the patient stepping inside the Doctor office. Telemedicine in India is expected to cross 35 billion dollars by 2022 and it will become a remarkable piece of modern healthcare delivery.

Telemedicine has created a wonderful opportunity to physicians as it connects with their patients remotely and can maintain the social distancing in pandemic situations. With modern medical high-tech devices, the physicians can monitor their patient’s health in long term and with long distance. Touch screen technology provides the clinicians to access the heart rate, blood sugar level, blood pressure by transmitting data from one device to the other. Healthcare information can be shared from one specialist to the other who is in other locations. When a disaster occurs, the shortage of health resources also occurs, which can be controlled by the help of telemedicine technology. This is also the same for a pandemic situation  for e.g.   telemedicine technology can be used to control the pandemic situation prevailing in the recent times. The social distancing can be maintained for the consultation and from the peer infection by consulting through telemedicine technology. The patients who need to be quarantined can consult their doctors remotely via telemedicine for their treatment. The need of hour for the hospitals is the Telemedicine technology.