Telemedicine in India is no more a hypothesis, but a proven theory. With the help of common service centres (CSCs), healthcare groups including Apollo and Medanta will offer telemedicine consultations in rural areas.

CSC SPV, the nodal agency overseeing a network of one lakh CSCs, separately signed memorandums of understanding with the two healthcare groups at the daylong workshop on “CSCs: Delivering Healthcare to Rural India” on Wednesday.

The CSCs will provide tele-consultations to rural citizens with the backend support from Apollo and Medanta.

Apollo has devised a business model for telemedicine. A patient will be charged Rs100 for the consultation. With the help of technology partner, Delhi Tel Services, the hospital group will offer telemedicine consultations at112 CSCs in Andhra Pradesh and two teleophthalmology centres in Rajasthan.

Medanta will offer health consultations free of cost at 10 CSCs in Ajmer district in Rajasthan. Out of 10, six centres are already offering medical consultation through a video conferencing. The Gurgaon-based healthcare group, however, hasn’t come up with a business model yet.

Dr Ajay Kumar, joint secretary, department of electronics and information technology (DeitY), said that like e-commerce did not pick up initially but now it has been widely accepted, telemedicine for rural India as an alternative for delivery of healthcare is to stabilize and evolve into a widely acceptable business model. There is a need, he said, to develop trust and acceptance among the people for making telemedicine a success, and evolve a model that can be replicable and sustainable.

"There is also a need of developing cost effective medical equipments for wider use to make the healthcare affordable," he said.

Manoj Jhalani, joint secretary, ministry of health and family welfare, said, “There is a huge potential for healthcare to synergise with the CSC model.” He said that the national rural health mission (NRHM) works on the same goal as that of CSC. He said that CSCs seem to have the potential to provide anytime medical care in rural India and the collaboration between CSCs and healthcare providers has made this a reality.

Anil Swarup, additional secretary, cabinet secretariat, underlined the significance of CSCs in extending the healthcare services to the rural India. He said that the success of healthcare services depend on its political acceptance, technological support, social desirability and setting up a connect with people.

He said the ability to reach out to the beneficiary is the real challenge for the success of healthcare through ICT and CSC SPV need to design unique communication model to address such issues of wider acceptability within the community.

Dr Dinesh Tyagi, CEO, CSC SPV said that the CSC project was not just a project, but a movement, to empower communities to get services at doorstep. He mentioned that CSC had been making an impact on various sectors including financial inclusion, education and now healthcare. Several pilot projects had been launched in agriculture but a proper commercial model in agriculture is still to be worked out.

CSCs were set up under the national e-governance plan as the front end delivery channels to provide government, private and social sector services to the rural masses.