A VIRTUAL DOSE

Digital connect with doctors and remote health monitoring are changing the healthcare delivery model

- E. KUMAR SHARMA

An experiment that two friends began 17 years ago has taken a new form and acquired relevance. At the turn of the century, space scientist and the then Chairman, Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), Dr K Kasturirangan, and Dr Devi Prasad Shetty, leading cardiac surgeon and founder of Narayana Health, came up with a plan to leverage ISRO satellites to remotely provide healthcare services. Little did they know then that it would become the norm in a corona-ravaged world. “Kasturirangan wanted to revolutionise rural healthcare using telemedicine that could be made possible with an ISRO dish on a hospital roof-top linked via satellite to a small dispensary in rural areas at the other end. I ended up seeing 53,000 patients across the country then,” says Dr Shetty.

Teleconsultation

“We could not transfer data and I could not see blood or X-ray reports. Now, it is dramatically different, and data is on the Microsoft Azure platform,” says Dr Shetty. Both he and Dr. Kasturirangan look back fondly at what they had attempted then and the new, robust form it has taken today, when Narayana gets health insights through the platform run on Azure, SQL Server and Power BI, as do some other leading hospitals. With pestilence rife and physical distance inevitable, teleconsultation is emerging as a viable healthcare delivery model. The Narayana Health City in Bangalore is alone seeing over 300 patients every day.