Trends

Virtual doctors are turning out to be a boon to Muslim women.


A silent revolution is taking place in the field of medicine. Super speciality hospitals such as Apollo Hospitals Group, Escorts Heart Research Institute, Narayana Hridayalaya and Fortis Healthcare, are aggressively pursuing the use of tele-medicine to hasten diagnostics and treatment of a variety of diseases. By utilising conferencing solutions and end-to-end communication systems, specialist doctors from these hospitals are ‘virtually’ making regular visits to distant places and treating people there.


Consider this: 80% of the doctors in the country are based in the top eight metros (including Pune, Ahmedabad, Bangalore and Hyderabad). With a rural population nearing 750 million, most of the people live in far-flung areas and do not have access to even basic medical attention. Thanks to recent advances in information and communication technologies (ICTs), India stands to benefit enormously from digital data transmission related to healthcare. The system is simple: A specialist doctor sitting at a hospital in a metro city logs on to his/her video conferencing system, and a patient putting up at a remote location visits a nearby conferencing centre connected to the hospital. By means of ISDN lines or VSAT connectivity, the doctor interacts with the patient, sees him, reads his medical reports, diagnoses him and provides him with the required medical treatment. This interaction takes place virtually face-to-face. Within a regular telemedicine system, the expert doctor’s terminal, referred to as telemedicine speciality centre (TSC) consists of a computer loaded with required software, a web camera, printer, scanner and a video conferencing device. On the other hand, the telemedicine consulting centre (TCC), located at a remote location, is equipped with various medical devices such as CT scan, x-ray machine, etc. It interfaces with the TSC by means of VSAT connectivity or IDSN lines and a conferencing solution. The expert doctor is able to view the live medical images of the patient in high resolution format, aided by high-end scanners.


The system is also very useful for Muslim women who find great difficulty in finding a woman specialist. Muslim women sometimes face really tough times searching for a well qualified and experienced woman doctor. Razia Sorathia who suffered post -pregnancy complications was asked to consult a Nephrologist (kidney specialist) by her gynecologist. Not finding a suitable nephrologists, she posted her problem on the online community of nephrologists. “With the cooperation of my family physician I was able to consult top nephrologists online and my treatment was completed within three weeks,” said Razia.


In a world dominated by men, professionally competent Muslim women find themselves isolated. In a Muslim society, even competent women interacting with men is seen with suspicion. Saleh Shaikh a physician was finding it very difficult to keep herself updated about the latest development in the field of Medicine. “I felt very awkward interacting with male practitioners, but now online interaction keeps us abreast of the latest development in national as well as international level besides helping us to maintain our dignity”, she said.


Saheeda Khan repented her decision to become a Opthalmologist. She was uncomfortable attending to male patients. “I could not bear the arrogance and stares of many of my male patients,” she said. ”Now I do the consultancy online where I am very comfortable as it protects me from those lustful stares and comments.”


Most of the Cyber doctors abroad charge in dollars and are very expensive. For example, you can click onto a website called Cyberdocs. For $50 (charged to your credit card) a live doctor will come online and discuss your medical problem.


The community is spending millions in creating the brick and mortar hospitals and caters to the middle class. Even most of the hospitals or healthcare centers funded by the community are out of reach of the deprived section and also those living in rural India.


Virtual health care centers can be viable option to the brick and mortar health care centers. They can be cost effective as well as reach Muslims who reside in the interior. Also for the Muslim women, it can be a boon. As far as models are concerned we have a ready- made model of government and private enterprises and educational institutes. One such model is ITC’s e-choupal providing customised knowledge in the native language about product quality, production methods and markets reaching out to more than two million farmers across the 20,000 villages through 5,150 Choupals across six states.