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AMRITA Institute of Medical Sciences unveiled its revolutionary telemedicine system and network for Digital Health at Every Doorstep, developed with the support of ISRO and the Ashraya Hastha Trust of Infosys Cofounder, Shri. K. Dinesh, at Infosys Leadership Campus, Mysore, on Wednesday, Feb 27, 2008 AMRITA’s wireless telemedicine instantly enables a variety of common biomedical and public healthcare diagnostic devices to capture body parameters directly from people in remote areas (including those in disaster conditions), or alternatively from peoples’ offices and homes; and immediately transmit wirelessly through a combination of ultra-high speed WiFi and Satellite Networks to the 1300-bed, all digital, super-specialty hospital, AIMS, in Kochi. Body parameters can be simple temperature or blood pressure or sugar levels to more complex x-ray images or ophthamological videos. The system uses innovative technology breakthroughs to separate out inexpensive probes that can be mobile from more expensive backend processing stationary at the remote super-specialty hospital. In this launch, AMRITA demonstrates the deployment of a high speed wireless fidelity network for the India’s landscape and a state-of-the-art mobile telemedicine vehicle with ability to roam on this wireless network. The biomedical instruments so developed, the wireless network and roaming mobile vehicle together have the potential to deliver digital health to every doorstep at affordable costs in rural areas as well as in disaster conditions. Low power wireless transmission, bandwidth-managed integrated multimedia communication of diagnostic images-video-voice, etc., are some of the significant technical breakthroughs achieved in the system. The system so demonstrated has the potential to be expanded to include ECG, Lab and Microscope-based tests for epidemic diseases (e.g., Typhoid, Malaria), x-ray for common injuries (e.g., among construction workers), Ophthalmology, Ultrasound (for women’s health), glucose level monitors, etc. the need for which we have keenly observed as the most commonly required ones in our rural areas. AMRITA’s prototype system manifests the societal application of the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) towards solving one of the alarmingly shooting up healthcare problems today in India’s vast rural landscape, where physical transportation facilities face common limitations. This project realizes the long-cherished dream of information communication replacing physical transportation – information highways in place of physical roads for delivering basic services to the remote and affected populations. |