HMRI looks to expand telemedicine services

Health Management & Research Institute (HMRI), a non-profit organisation which runs the '104' healthcare helpline in Andhra Pradesh and Assam, plans to roll out telemedicine services in six states beginning in about a year.

The new service is aimed at taking healthcare services to the 3-4 million people living in remote habitations in the state and who are out of reach of existing services, said Balaji Utla, CEO, HMRI.

Once established, the system would be replicated in six other states in the country, depending on the need and feasibility, he said in an interaction with reporters here today.

Utla said, “There are many ‘blighted areas’ where no doctor wants to go and where no access roads exist. The health status of people there is so bad ... some were so anaemic (ie, low levels of haemoglobin in blood) that doctors were surprised how they were alive.”

Pilot programmes of telemedicine have been running in three villages in Mahabubnagar, Khammam and Visakhapatnam districts. In this model, trained paramedics use equipment to measure health parameters of the patients and transmit the reports, data and images to doctors, who in turn diagnose and prescribe medicine, he said.

A basic telemedicine kit costs around Rs 1 lakh and measures six parameters, while the advanced system capable of 150 tests (except MRI scan, CT scan and X-ray) could cost up to Rs 40 lakh.

All of HMRI’s services would only supplement the existing public health infrastructure, with it providing technological support and management, he said. Its ‘104’ helpline in the state was a public-private partnership, with government contributing Rs 24 crore out of its total budget of Rs 25 crore.

Its Fixed Day Health Service (FDHS), in which a van with diagnostic equipment periodically visits villages without a primary health centre on a specific day, has now been completely taken over by the government in Andhra Pradesh, while a similar service in Assam is being run jointly with the state government there, he said.

The FDHS was able to increase institutional deliveries by 25 percent, while the helpline is estimated to have saved Rs 300 crore in healthcare costs for the patients since mid-2007 when it started.