E Health Point describes itself as a "sustainable social business enterprise" that provides telemedicine services in rural India. Learn more in the following short, succinct video. The starting point chosen by the company is clever: potable water sold on an inexpensive subscription basis.
(Healthpoint healthcare services in rural India)
Water Treatment via advanced Reverse Osmosis units provides safe drinking on a monthly subscription basis as a preventative measure against water-borne disease. The subscription fee for a household is R 75 ($ 1.5 approximately) per month and assures it of 20 liters of clean drinking water on a daily basis; this is often equivalent to about half-day wage in rural settings in India.
Tele-medical Consultation with licensed medical doctors and trained health workers, conducted via video-conferencing from HSI’s urban tele-medical center. The doctors are engaged from local areas (for linguistic familiarity) and are specially trained in providing telemedical consultations...
Advanced Diagnostic Tools provide with patient’s vital signs–vide digital stethoscope, non-invasive blood pressure monitor, electrocardiogram (ECG) and offers more than 70 additional diagnostic tests. The average cost per test is R 40 ($ 1 approximately).
Medicines are dispensed at each EHP by a licensed pharmacist; the pharmacy stocks primarily branded generics medicines as well as a range of non-prescription drugs at modest cost to patients. The price discounts range up to 50% of the list prices and these are guaranteed genuine products sourced by EHP directly from authorized channel members of leading pharmaceutical companies.
Science fiction readers were treated to a very early description of telemedicine. In his 1909 classic The Machine Stops, E.M. Forster describes a person who never leaves her tiny one-bedroom apartment, and is yet tended by physicians.
"Kuno," she said, "I cannot come to see you. I am not well."
Immediately an enormous apparatus fell on to her out of the ceiling, a thermometer was automatically laid upon her heart. She lay powerless. Cool pads soothed her forehead. Kuno had telegraphed to her doctor.
So the human passions still blundered up and down in the Machine. Vashti drank the medicine that the doctor projected into her mouth, and the machinery retired into the ceiling.
(Read more about Forster's telemedicine apparatus)
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