Satcom based distance education in medicine - evaluation of Orissa telemedicine network

Indian sub-continent is a vast country having large land mass. There are about 150 medical colleges located in twenty-one states. In recent times many super-specialties and sub-specialties in the medical sciences have been developed. Medical experts in these fields are few and are located in large university medical centers. Medical education is unique in the sense clinical material constitutes study material. Since most of the medical colleges aim at providing education at graduate and postgraduate level, such super/sub-specialty areas are not covered enough. Telemedicine technology using Indian satellite communication system was used in Orissa state (located in eastern part of India) connecting three of its medical colleges with Sanjay Gandhi Postgraduate Institute of Medical Sciences, Lucknow, an university academic medical center (located 1500 kms away in the northern part of India) with the objective of imparting need based education in some specialized area from a distance. The project is under operation for last one year. Audit at the end of one year is being presented in this report. Based on the feed back received from the user's and provider's end we found it worthwhile to use telemedicine technology based on satellite communication effective enough to optimally utilize the knowledge of few experts in certain specialized areas for the benefit of medical students in far off medical colleges.