Seminar of Physics of the Living State

(The Applied Physics Scientific Section)

(*) Summary: India with its vast population, of which 70% are poor and often live in difficult to reach and inhospitable terrain, along with inadequate healthcare network faces a daunting challenge of providing quality healthcare to its citizens. Here, the average per capita spend on healthcare is one of the lowest in the world and various healthcare indicators are also lower than the global average. In order to provide quality and affordable healthcare to all, Telemedicine – the use of telecommunications to improve patient’s health status by exchanging medical information from one site to another has provided an impetus to the government’s vision of quality health for all by helping in delivering quality healthcare and in controlling the spiraling medical costs.     The future for Telemedicine at the moment looks promising with governmental backing and private initiative.  Telemedicine applications will play an increasingly important role in health care and provide tools that are indispensable for home health care, remote patient monitoring, and disease management, that encompasses not only rural health and battlefield care, but nursing home, assisted living facilities, and maritime and aviation applications. In fact,

o    ISRO’s Telemedicine network has touched more than 30,000,000 people
o    Various state governments under National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) have begun implementing Telemedicine network
o    States such as Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Chattisgarh, Rajasthan and Kerala have all district covered under Telemedicine network
o    States such as Haryana, Madhya Pradesh, J&K, Punjab including North East states have taken to Telemedicine in big way.
o    Under NRHM, government has allocated a budget of Rs. 10 million per annum for each state to increase Telemedicine nodes at district level.
o    Telemedicine network under the eHealth initiatives has been put to use to provide Continual Medical Education (CME) for doctors and nurses
o    Large companies such as ONGC have adopted Telemedicine for their remote operations
      Players in the Telemedicine  are:

o    Ministry of Health, Government of India (GoI)
o    Department of Information Technology, GoI
o    State Government, which manages hospitals in district and remote places
o    Satellite bandwidth provider – ISRO
o    Medical Education provider – AIIMS, SGPGI, Medical Colleges across India
o    Healthcare providers - Apollo Hospitals, AIIMS, Asian Heart Foundation, Narayana Hrudalya, Amrita Institute of Medical Sciences, District hospitals
o    Telemedicine software provider – C-DAC, Televital, Apollo Telemedicine Networking Foundation
o    Medical equipment providers – Wipro GE Healthcare, Siemens, Philips
o    Telecommunications equipment providers – VTEL, Cisco, Ericson
o    Videoconferencing equipment provider – Polycom, SONY.

11th Five-Year plan allocates priority for providing accessible health care to rural population using existing  fiber optic and satellite infrastructure , With the help of IT, satellite and fibre optic network, Telemedicine provides specialized healthcare to remote corners of country Telemedicine as a practice has been adopted by both – private and public sector healthcare providers Telemedicine at present is mainly used for non-invasive and non-surgical diagnosis and treatment Telemedicine is making healthcare financially viable to non-insured and poor people.

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(**) Biodata: Dr. Arun   Chougule is Dean of Paramedical Sciences in Rajasthan  University of Health Sciences, Jaipur and Professor  at  the S.M.S. Medical College & Hospital, Jaipur, Rajasthan, India. He is   In charge of the Telemedicine project in Rajasthan.

    After completing his Master's Degree in Physics in 1982 he worked as a Lecturer in Physics for one year and then joined Bhabha Atomic Research Center, Mumbai for Post Master’s Diploma in Radiological and Hospital Physics from Mumbai University. He did his Ph.D. on “ Linear Quadratic Model Applied to Radiotherapy " from BARC, Mumbai University in 1994. Presently he is working as Dean Paramedical Sciences and Professor of Radiation Physics. The Telemedicine Project in Rajasthan started on 14 th Feb. 2006 and since that time he is the Incharge for this project. He has 26 years of teaching experience. He has been awarded many fellowships and in 2010 he received the “Meritorious Radiological Safety Award" from the Indian Society of Radiation Protection and other awards in his field of expertise.

    He has published over 68 research papers in national and international journals and presented numerous research papers in national and international conferences. He has completed three major research projects funded by the Government of India as Principal Investigator. He has several Ph.D. and other graduate students. He is a Member of many scientific organizations and a frequent reviewer of spacialized literature.