SATCOM based Cloud enabled Portable e-health toolkit for Public Health
Mishra Saroj
School of Telemedicine & Biomedical Informatics,
Sanjay Gandhi Post Graduate Institute of Medical Sciences
Presentation: Video available since 25.08.2014, [Video]
Discussion: 26.08.2014, [Discussion] Main flashmeeting
26.08.2014 [Discussion] Side flashmeeting
The vast geographical area of India is comprising 28 states and 6 union territories spread over 3 million sq. km. having over one billion population. Public Health solely rest with government responsibility. Satellite communication based tele-health practice has been in practice in India since over a decade. Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) has deployed around four hundred telemedicine nodes spread across the country. Current mHealth devices are able to continuously monitor an individual's pulse and blood pressure, detect breathing abnormalities associated with bronchial asthma and other chronic respiratory system diseases from door step. Developing countries require low-cost, sustainable telemedicine solutions for the local delivery of primary healthcare at the door step of the each individual. Expensive telemedicine platform and network media act as barrier in adoption of this technology in health system in low resource environment. A low-cost portable telemedicine kit called mHealth4U® was designed and developed to address these needs. The kit was developed at the School of Telemedicine & Biomedical Informatics (STBMI). This telemedicine kit consists of a Laptop, portable wireless broadband internet, software based videoconferencing system, Non-invasive Blood Pressure (NIBP), Spirometer, ECG, SPO2. Softwares like CDAC’s eSanjeevani® and Nimbus® are cloud enabled solutions based on SaaS model are suitable for such applications. The practitioner in a remote area can capture patient data in the form of audio, video, and images in an asynchronous/synchronous fashion and forward them over the wireless broad band internet to a doctor for a diagnosis and videoconference could be established for real time consultation. The prototype is already pilot tested waiting for market transfer.