Inmarsat partner, I-Linx, has launched a pioneering telemedicine trial in rural India using Regional BGAN.

The trial is providing remote medical diagnostics for people in need of medical care in the Nagapattinam area of southern India, where there were more than 700 deaths caused by the recent tsunami.

I-Linx teamed up with health software experts TeleVital about a year ago to assist non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to deliver specialized healthcare to people in remote areas of the world.

In Nagapattinam the project assisted Rescue Foundation - an Indian NGO - to send critical diagnostic data gathered from patients in rural villages via a mobile facility.

The team is touring with a Regional BGAN terminal to remote villages to help people with a broad spectrum of medical issues - including trauma counselling for many people who lost loved-ones in the tsunami. Medical images are streamed in real-time across the Internet so that the specialists in India can provide a diagnosis while talking to patients using web-based audio conferencing.

The Regional BGAN terminals link to TeleVital's browser-based telemedicine solutions - helping to transmit key information such as X-rays, ultrasound scans, MRI scans and angiograms. Roselie Vasquez-Yetter, vice-president of I-Linx, explained: "We planned for more than a year to run this trial covering all aspects of medical diagnosis.

"But the service is also proving extremely helpful dealing with the aftermath of the tsunami - linking the NGO representatives on the ground with specialists in New Delhi.

"A key factor is the TeleVital software, which enables large files to be compressed into small packets of data so that it can be downloaded in real time via Regional BGAN terminal," she said.

In February a live demonstration of the technology in February linked doctors in St Stephen's Hospital, New Delhi, with an NGO in Tamil Nadu and the US-based SID International Health and Nutrition Workgroup in Washington DC.