Telemedicine set to grow in India over the next 5 years


The Indian government has been investing in telemedicine in a bid to make health care more accessible to the country's rural communities. But sceptics are wary about the limitations of the technology when it comes to diagnosis, care, and surgery. Kristin Elisabeth Solberg reports.
Watched by a doctor on the other side of the Indian subcontinent, 32-year-old Manik Debnath leans back as far as he can before he feels the arthritis pain. “Where does it hurt?” rheumatologist Balakrishnan Rajasekar asks. Manik points to his lower back.
 
The scene is similar to that of any conventional medical consultation, with one fundamental difference: the doctor and patient are nearly 2000 miles apart. In the city of Silchar, in the impoverished north Indian state of Assam, where there is an acute shortage of doctors, Manik communicates with his rheumatologist in the south Indian city of Chennai through a video conference device.
 
This could be the future for health care in India, where both the public- and the private-health sectors are devoting substantial amounts of money and effort to mainstream telemedicine. Proponents of telemedicine see it as a solution to some of the deficiencies in the country's health sector. India faces a shortage of doctors, particularly in rural areas, where nearly 70% of the population lives. Doctors and hospitals are largely concentrated in cities, and as a consequence, health care in rural India is inadequate or absent......Read More
 
 
 

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