Telemedicine in India: Where do we stand?

Telemedicine is considered to be the remote diagnosis and treatment of patients by means of telecommunications technology, thereby providing substantial healthcare to low income regions. Earliest published record of telemedicine is in the first half if the 20th century when ECG was transmitted over telephone lines. From then to today, telemedicine has come a long way in terms of both healthcare delivery and technology. A major role in this was played by NASA and ISRO. The setting up of the National Telemedicine Taskforce by the Health Ministry of India, in 2005, paved way for the success of various projects like the ICMR-AROGYASREE, NeHA and VRCs. Telemedicine also helps family physicians by giving them easy acess to speciality doctors and helping them in close monitoring of patients. Different types of telemedicine services like store and forward, real-time and remote or self-monitoring provides various educational, healthcare delivery and management, disease screening and disaster management services all over the globe. Even though telemedicine cannot be a solution to all the problems, it can surely help decrease the burden of the healthcare system to a large extent.