Soon, experts working in medical colleges will be able to share their surgical and interventional skills with one another, with the ministry of health proposing to set up telemedicine infrastructure in all medical colleges and institutions to network each other under a new scheme — “e-health, including telemedicine”.
The Central-sponsored scheme of `103.99 crore for the establishment of a National Medical College Network (NMCN) will have about 41 government medical colleges networked in the first phase. Under Phase I of the scheme, a national-cum-regional resource centre, five regional resource centres and 35 other medical colleges shall be networked. To start with, national resource centres will be started at SGPGI, Lucknow, JIPMER, Puducherry, PGIMER, Chandigarh, KEM Medical College & Hospital, Mumbai, AIIMS, and NEIGRIHMS, Shillong, Meghalaya.
The proposal is that the ministry of health will run it for the initial five years, after which the states will take over the management.
The idea is to facilitate tele-education, access to specialist consultation and access to electronic knowledge repositories.
The scheme also proposes creating a digital library infrastructure for facilitating medical researchers and knowledge seekers to have continuing education programme.
Officials say that the infrastructure would facilitate continued professional skill development of human resources for health. “This will help in exchanging the expertise and getting to know the best,” said a senior official.
The proposed national network of medical colleges will have a central hub housing the data centre which will be designated as the National Resource Centre (NRC).
The NRC will be networked with five regional hubs to be called as regional resource centres (RRCs) located at different regions of the country.
