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e-Medical Initiatives

Steps must be taken to provide uniformly accessible, affordable and equitable healthcare for rural populations by using ICTs with pre-existing under-utilized public health services.
Computerization of all health related data can be done to facilitate appointments with doctors and educate the rural about health information. A concept like smart cards for PHCs can also be introduced.

e-Commerce Infrastructure Development

Appropriate software for the user interface to be in Indian languages must be developed by the various software companies to help the rural poor understand the use the Internet kiosks without the knowledge of English language.

As for hardware, since the functionality required is basic text processing, emails and browsing, thus, mass market computers must be manufactured in-house for rural users. These computers would be low cost efficient systems fulfilling the rural needs.

Conclusion

A majority of the population in India lives in rural areas and poverty also co-inhabits with the rural masses in these areas. Therefore, the developmental initiatives, with or without ICT, must focus on the needs of the rural populace, which necessitates an exact determination of those requirements, so as to render the development efforts successful.

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* Contributed by: -
Shruti Rustagi,
Indian Institute of Management, Lucknow.