As a part of World Space Week, being celebrated worldwide from October 4, 2000, ISRO organized a Video Conference on Telemedicine this afternoon (October 6, 2000). Antariksh Bhavan, the Headquarters of ISRO at Bangalore and INSAT-Master Control Facility (MCF) at Hassan were connected through Satellite Based Communication Network for this conference.

Telemedicine is a mode of health delivery involving the transfer of medical information in a multimedia form between patients and doctors who are geographically separated. Telemedicine is identified as a major thrust area in satellite applications for the current decade. DECU has already embarked on several pilot projects in this regard. A pilot project has been initiated to interconnect the super specialty Apollo Hospital at Chennai with a hospital in a remote village in Chittoor district of Andhra adesh as well as with ISRO hospitals at Shriharikota and Bangalore. As part of GRAMSAT pilot project, several states including Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Orissa have Telemedicine integrated in their planned space applications programs.

In the telemedicine conference today, several specialist doctors -- Dr K S Gopinath, Dr B S Ramesh, Dr R Seethalakshmi, Dr R Sandhya Belwadi, Dr Devi Shetty, Dr Jaya Bhat, Dr P P Maiya & Dr P N Bhat were present at Bangalore end and a large number of practicing doctors were present at Hassan end. A demonstration of cost-effective equipment for telemedicine was also part of the program.

It may be noted that the beneficial role of satellite-based system for education, development communications and healthcare has been recognized by ISRO. Satellite communication with its inherent capability to reach wide and far-flung areas has proved to be of great advantage for the transformation of the society. Development Education and Communication Unit (DECU) of ISRO, based at Ahmedabad, has already demonstrated the use of interactive satellite based communications system in different application are
.. Tele-medicine is one such area of demonstration.

Dr S Rangarajan, Director, Satellite Communication Programmes Office of ISRO, inaugurating the teleconference today, emphasized the need for involvement of Doctors in designing the telemedicine programs in the context of our national needs. Shri M Y S Prasad, Director, MCF Hassan, brought out the importance of the World Space week.