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Telemedicine promises to give rural and remote communities a new way of accessing high-quality, real-time interactive health advice and assistance. Potential services include consultations with specialists via videoconferencing, electronic exchange of medical
records and diagnostic tests, and general community access to an extensive range of online health information. The rurally-based GP can also benefit in terms of a reduction in professional isolation: via access to current "best practice" information.

The Road Ahead

The road ahead is not going to be very easy. Of course, if handled very well, this can lead to a very high growth rate in the rural regions and the country on the whole. It needs to garner its strength in rural areas in a very well devised manner.

Strategy #1

One of the main problems currently in rural India, as highlighted earlier is the lack of infrastructure. The basic telecom infrastructure is not present in major part of the rural India. The government on its part is trying to lay down this infrastructure, but the process need to be speeded up. Moreover, with the advent of technology, V-SAT can be used in places with laying physical cable is tough or impossible as used by ITC. Access to internet should be given to as soon as possible.

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* Contributed by: -
Nishant Waghela,
Alumni of IIM Ahmedabad,
Working at SBI, Mumbai.