The Government has taken various steps to strengthen the telemedicine network to provide healthcare services in the country. Health being a State subject, Ministry of Health & Family Welfare is continuously providing support & assistance to States/UTs to facilitate the expansion of Telemedicine facility to improve healthcare services in remote areas as follows:
National Medical College Network (NMCN)-With the purpose of e-Education and e-Healthcare delivery, 50 Government Medical Colleges have been selected to interconnect, riding over NKN (National Knowledge Network – high speed bandwidth connectivity). For this purpose, one National Resource Centre (NRC) with required centralized infrastructure and 7 Regional Resource Centres (RRCs) have been established.
State Telemedicine Network (STN): The States/UTs have been supported under National Health Mission (NHM) under Program Implementation Plan (PIP) for strengthening State Telemedicine initiatives under STN & to create reliable, ubiquitous and high speed network backbone, all available and future network. So far ten states have been financially supported.
Tele-Medicine Nodes at Pilgrim places: Ministry of Health & Family Welfare (MoHFW) in collaboration with Department of Space has setup Telemedicine nodes for health awareness, screening of non-communicable disease (NCD) and for providing specialty consultation to the devotees visiting following places:
Maa Vindhyavasini Mandir, Vindhyachal Dham, Mirzapur (UP)
Sheshnag, Amarnath Pilgrimage (J&K)
Pampa Hospital, Ayyappa Temple at Sabrimala in Kerala
Kashi Vishwanath Temple, Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh
Tele-Evidence: The tele-evidence facility streamlines the process of doctors appearing in courts in response to summons and saving their time not only for patient care but also for medical education and research. The project is operational in Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education & Research (PGIMER), Chandigarh since March 2014 and more than 4000 Summon Cases have been attended till date.
The Minister of State (Health and Family Welfare), Smt Anupriya Patel stated this in a written reply in the Lok Sabha