Technolgy to help medicine reach remote areas

Chandigarh: Now, medical science is gearing up to use cell phone technology to deliver health care to remote parts of the country, reports Financial Express.

Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research (PGIMER), the Chandigarh based institute, is working in collaboration with Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (Barc), on a pioneering national healthcare project called mhealth.

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Through this project, doctors will be able to provide medical advice to patients who are living in remote areas. It is also considered to be a promising initiative in the field of geriatric care, involving medical care for aged patients.

In this project, the health worker first takes the electrocardiogram (ECG) of a patient on a battery-operated, hand-held machine. The hand-held ECG has been developed by Barc, in which using bluetooth technology the health worker transfers the data to his own mobile phone. The data is then transferred to the mobile phone of a specialist who may be based elsewhere. The specialist reads the ECG of the patient and gives advice on his condition to the health worker. So, the health worker can provide correct primary care to the patient.

Meenu Singh, Additional Professor at PGI and in-charge of the mhealth project, says that as part of the pilot project, the ECGs of patients taken through the mhealth equipment are being compared with the ECGs of the same patients taken at the hospital premise on its inhouse machines.

"This is being done to check the efficacy of the data taken through the mhealth equipment," she said.