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MILPITAS, Calif. — A village doctor in rural Karnataka links to
an expert anesthesiologist in Chicago. A patient in Ecuador steps
into a mobile health clinic and his heart rate is observed by a
physician in Kyoto.
Doctors may be separated from their patients
by thousands of miles, but thanks to a revolutionary new product
called TeleVital, they are now able to monitor, diagnose and treat
them in real time using technology no more impressive than a simple
Web browser and telephone line.
"I created it so that I could monitor my daughter," TeleVital
president Kishore Kumar, 46, told India-West. "Now,
NASA is using it, too", along with the United States military, the
American India Foundation and many other organizations.
TeleVital’s technology enables remote medical monitoring over
the Internet, and has a wide range of applications, from tracking
pulmonary disorders to anesthesia, blood sugar and cholesterol levels,
weight and even sleep disorders; in short, "any device you can think
of," said Kumar, you can hook up to TeleVital’s software for real-time
access to information across borders, and in NASA’s case, maybe
even farther than that.
Kishore Kumar’s daughter, Deepika, was born in 1990. Due to a
complication during delivery, the nerves to her left shoulder were
damaged and she lost the use of her left arm. Kumar and his wife,
Padmaja, tried everything from allopathic treatment to Ayurveda
and Indian massage, and got into the habit of sending Deepika to
India every summer for treatment there. "It was when Deepika was
in India in the summer of 1999 that I first developed the concept
of remotely monitoring her vital signs", said Kumar.
Kumar had been working as a senior software engineer for Sun
Microsystems, and he discussed the concept with his friend B.V.
Jagadeesh, a well-known angel investor and cofounder of Exodus Communications.
It was Jagadeesh who introduced Kumar to Dinesh Bajaj, 56, then
director of sales for VPNet Technologies.
"He wanted to build a product and take it to market " Bajaj recalled.
" So we took it to hospitals, clinics, the Defense Department, airlines
… the applications are enormous."
Here’s how it works. The patient in a clinic, at home or at any
remote location is hooked up to whatever monitoring equipment the
doctor chooses. This could be as simple as a $75 blood-pressure
cuff or as complicated as a dialysis machine or even an entire surgery
theater beeping with vital sign monitoring equipment.
The monitoring equipment is hooked up to a desktop or laptop
PC loaded with the TeleVital software and a simple modem. Moments
later, the information is traveling in real time to the doctor’s
computer anywhere in the world. The doctor reads the vital signs
on a simple interface, and can even program the equipment to turn
on and off at will. Each kit, including software and Web-based training
and customer service, costs around $10,000, plus the cost of the
medical monitoring equipment. Right now, the software is available
only for PCs using the Internet Explorer browser, but Bajaj said
that Palm OS is in the works and maybe one day, Mac-ready software
too.
Several major hospitals in India are already interested, including
the Amrita Institute of Medical Sciences in Cochin, an 800-bed multi-specialty
hospital which is now connected to the Amrita Kripa Charitable Hospital
in a remote Kerala village called Vallikavu 150 kms away.
Not only is the software designed to be easily accepted and put
to use, but security too is a prime concern all sessions are password
protected and transmitted over secure Internet connections, said
Bajaj.
The uses in India are almost unlimited, said Kumar. AIF purchased
several TeleVital kits for use in remote settlements in India, including
the Jain International School outside Bangalore and Narayana Hrudayalaya,
a hub for telecardiology networks with a joint venture between the
governments of seven Eastern Indian hill states.
As the American population ages, Kumar and Bajaj believe that
TeleVital’s software will become even more widely used here welcome
news to health insurers. "Why should you waste your entire day driving
across town to a medical center, parking and waiting to see a doctor
for a ten-minute visit?" said Bajaj. "Soon, you’ll be able to just
send the data straight to the doctor."
The company is still small, with fewer than a dozen employees
and a round of angel funding to the tune of $1.5 million. But the
sky’s the limit.
"With $1.3 trillion being spent on medical care every year in
this country alone, we also see this as a dramatic cost-saving measure,"
said Bajaj. "We see a revolution in the way health care is delivered."
Photos courtesy of Lisa Tsering / India-West.
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