RAWALPINDI, July 12: Holy Family Hospital (HFH) is being developed into a model tele-medicine centre and the formal inauguration of the hospital’s optical fibre link will be performed in August, National Coordinator for Tele-Medicine Prof (Dr) Asif Zafar said on Friday.

Talking to this reporter, he said the HFH model would soon be replicated throughout the country. He said the new operation theatres of the hospital were being linked to the auditorium where medical students would be taught while surgery was being performed.

Speaking about the potential of tele-medicine in the country, the coordinator said there existed a great disparity in the availability of health care resources in the country, which could be corrected to a great extent through tele-medicine.

Dr Zafar said through the use of information and telecommunication technologies, health care could be provided to the patient irrespective of his geographical location.

Dilating on the new concept, he said in Pakistan 75 per cent of the population lived in the rural areas which were served by 22 per cent doctors. The national doctor to patient ratio was 1:1,555 whereas the specialist to patient ratio was 1:13,000.

Under the circumstances, he said, it was next to impossible to provide enough infrastructure and doctors to be able to meet the growing demand.

However, he said the solution lied in tele-medicine. “The solution of the problem of limited outreach of health care facilities is the use of tele-medicine to augment the conventional medical services, which would also permit optimum and efficient utilization of resources,” Dr Zafar said.

Mentioning other benefits of tele-medicine, the national coordinator said: “The concept envisages reducing travel time and related stress to the patient and also cuts the cost of specialized health care, making it more accessible to under served rural and urban population.”

Speaking about the feasibility of the project, he said the number of telephone lines were over three million and internet usage was rapidly increasing, the number of people using cellular phone service was also well above 300,000 — all which shows that the condition are conducive for launching of the tele-medicine concept.

“We require trained doctors and software to run the system, which are both available,” he added.

He, nevertheless, cautioned that the new concept would not be a replacement of the patients’ face to face contact with the doctor.

He said other projects planned under tele-medicine were health management information system, health information resource centre, tele-psychiatry, tele-dermatology, tel-medfone and school health service programme.