Space Hospitals to offer e-health services

Having handled the Centre's pilot project at the Thittacheri CSC (common services centres) in Tamil Nadu successfully, Space Hospitals Ltd has received a proposal from the Department of Information Technology to design a business model to provide e-health services to the CSCs.

The CSCs will offer these services to the public as part of their entire range of services.

"The government has planned to set up one lakh kiosks across the country, of which 3,000 would be set up in Tamil Nadu within a year. Space Hospitals will provide the telemedicine software and connectivity facilities to these kiosks," said A Venkatramani, founder, Space Hospitals.

Space Hospitals would set up around 100 pharmacies by 2008-09.

"We also plan to have around 40,000 doctors on our network for consultancy services by 2008-09. A doctor, who is using Space Hospitals' telemedicine services will be connected to all doctors on our network and will be able to contact any of them for further help or consultation," Venkatramani added.

Space Hospitals will set up 8,000 centres in the next five years and has plans to reach out to 10 million people through its telemedicine services.

In another year, the Chennai-based telemedicine service provider is planning to set up 500-1,000 centres.