The Current Status of eHealth Initiatives in India

This 15-page document, prepared for the Making the eHealth Connection: Global Partnerships, Local Solutions conference of 2008 in Bellagio, Italy, describes the strides of telemedicine and eHealth in India. As stated here: "Most telemedicine activities are in project mode, supported by the Indian Space Research Organization and the Department of Information Technology and being implemented through state governments. A few corporate hospitals have developed their own telemedicine networks, prominent among them being the Apollo Telemedicine Networking Foundation.... Around 500 telemedicine nodes are in place across the country." According to the authors, an impact evaluation is scheduled and will be used in determining the detail of the next 5-year plan for eHealth development nationally.

National telemedicine standardisation and practice guidelines are being developed by the Department of Information Technology. A National Telemedicine Task Force to evaluate the pros and cons of introducing eHealth in India was set up by the Health Ministry. The External Affairs Ministry is analysing the Pan-African e-Network Project and the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) Telemedicine Network Projects.

In the area of education and information communication, the document describes: "The National Knowledge Commission, a high level advisory body to the Prime Minister of India, with the objective of transforming India into a knowledge society, has also set up a Working Group for the development of an Indian Health Information Network. This working group has proposed to design, develop, and integrate an end-to-end electronic health care informatics network framework in India to improve public health, health research, and the delivery of health care. A National Resource Center on Telemedicine & Biomedical Informatics is being developed at Lucknow with the support of the information technology (IT) department of the Government of India. This will piggyback on the School of Telemedicine & Biomedical Informatics set up by the Uttar Pradesh state government. Besides meeting the need of capacity building in telemedicine and eHealth for the country, this school will also be accepting overseas candidates. Training programs are being carried out by the Apollo Telemedicine Network Foundation in Chennai in conjunction with Anna University."

The market segment of the health care business-process outsourcing (BPO) and knowledge-process outsourcing (KPO) industries in India is reported to be sizeable. In addition, India is a destination for international visitors seeking health care, increasing the potential for telemedicine and eHealth tools reaching across country boundaries. This has resulted in a need to address licensing, ethical, and legal issues to promote the integration of electronic- and information-technology tools to facilitate global health care.