The Hindu Business Line : A low-cost telemedicine kit for rural areas

Mr Sameer S. Sawarkar, CEO, Neurosynaptic Communciations (P) Ltd, giving a demo of the company's telemedicine kit which is to be installed in rural areas. — Bijoy Ghosh

Chennai , May 18

ETHIRAJ travels about 15 km to Chingleput government hospital for a routine health check up. The 45-year-old farmer has been doing this for a decade to see doctors either for himself or for his family members.

Technology has made it easy for doctors to detect various diseases. But it is restricted only to people in urban areas. The country's large rural population continues to suffer from non-availability of simple and standard healthcare infrastructure.

It is to bridge this major gap that the Bangalore-based Neurosynaptic Communications Pvt Ltd and the TeNeT (The Telecommunication and Computer Networks) Group at Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, have developed a low-cost telemedicine solution for rural areas.

It includes a remote diagnostic kit and a personal computer to provide basic healthcare infrastructure in rural areas, and help people like Ethiraj sitting in villages get advice from doctors in urban areas.

The Rs 10,000-kit can be installed at villages having Internet connection. It can measure basic physiological parameters like temperature, blood pressure, pulse rate and multi-channel ECG (electrocardiogram). It also has an electronic stethoscope, said Mr Sameer S. Sawarkar, Chief Executive Officer, Neurosynaptic Communications.

The kit is six to seven times cheaper than the currently available products, if each feature is bought on a stand-alone basis, he said.

Doctors in secondary or tertiary healthcare centres and patients at remote locations can be connected to each other over a video conferencing link. The data from the kit is communicated to a computer through a wireless infrared link. The fully battery operated kit also has an integrated video/audio conferencing capability, and a central database can store all patient records and history. Measurements made using the kit can be sent to the doctor in a remote location over the Internet. Using the data, the doctor can diagnose the patient and make a more informed decision about the state of the patient, he said.

"We want to provide healthcare services to rural population where doctors are not available so readily," he said. The kit is easy to operate by any literate person. The information can be stored as medical records for future references. The kit will help doctors at tertiary or secondary healthcare sites to diagnose patients in far off villages by studying real-time and stored medical data parameters on the computer screen, he said.

An alumnus of Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, Mr Sawarkar founded Neurosynaptic along with his college mate Mr Rajeev Kumar.

The kit has been given to large hospitals and a few medical professionals to validate its use, and also suggest modifications, if any. n-Logue Communications, a TeNeT group company, will install the kit at Chiraag, a village-based information kiosks across the country, said Mr P. G. Ponnapa, Chief Executive Officer, n-Logue.

To begin with, n-Logue plans to test the medical kit in two or three village centres for a few days, and later install it all over the country. The company will install about 5,000 kiosks by August end, he said.

A kiosk costs about Rs 53,500 to set up, and includes equipment like Wall Set that receives the wireless corDECT - a fixed wireless access solution that provides simultaneous voice and Internet - signal, branded personal computer with 15" colour monitor, digital camera and inkjet printer.

An application suite consisting of word-processing, browsing and email software all in local language as well as English is also available.

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