Tele ICU Deployment: Challenges in India

It is stated that low- & middle-income countries suffers 90% of the world’s disease burden having only 12% of world’s health expenditure. Due to dearth of various resources, it is difficult for underdeveloped countries to have access to healthcare, basic and advanced both.

For every problem there is a solution and to deal with several issues in healthcare such as ICU personnel shortage, lack of infrastructure and quality of care, eNext ICU offered a solution where a team of trained ICU staff & intensivists monitor ICU patients remotely and support the physical ICU staff in multiple spoke ICUs via leveraging technology.

In a country like India, where people’s belief is more in traditional methods for their treatment, it is difficult for Tele ICU service providers to penetrate the market. The Government of India has published guidelines in favor of using digital technology in healthcare i.e. “Telemedicine Practice Guidelines” -26th March 2020, which hopefully will encourage patients and doctors to accept this advancement in digital healthcare with greater confidence.

Regardless of the fact that Telemedicine has been approved by the Government, still, introducing a new concept is always a challenge to the pioneers, in terms of acceptance by the public as well as various technical issues in the specific remote areas which we aim to cater to.