The US based company, Polycom, views impediment to healthcare delivery in India is driven primarily by the skewed distribution of doctors in rural-urban areas. The country needs adequate bandwidth to provide high level interactions. The company sees the need to work with government of India to develop a telehealth friendly environment where doctors will also be incentivized to use different delivery models that benefit patients and the overall healthcare system.
The company which is a global leader in video and voice tele-presence solutions leads the industry with the ability to get full HD 720P 30 fps with as little as 512 kbps. It would be keen to work with medical associations to establish by-laws for validating the use of this technology to provide services to populations across India that never had them before.
“We also see an imprecise distribution of healthcare professionals where 33 per cent of government doctors in India are in rural areas catering to 70 per cent of the population residing in semi urban regions. Therefore videoconferencing and further more telemedicine are a critical components to bridge the gap, Ron Emerson RN BSN, Global Director, Solutions Market Development, Healthcare, Polycom told Pharmabiz.
Videoconferencing enables efficient access to not just for telemedicine, but for medical education and administrative purposes, he added.
The US based company sets its eyes on the emerging markets beginning with Middle East North Africa(MENA) region where currently videoconferencing is very mature where it is a tool of choice to efficient healthcare delivery, he said.
Also, in the US, interactive telemedicine is also growing at a significant rate. Quoting a report of the ‘Top 10 healthcare trends, Emerson said that telehealth market which registered earnings to the tune of $240 million in 2013 is expected to touch to $1.9 billion by 2018, representing an annual growth rate of 56 per cent.
For Polycom, India is on its radar to drive much of its growth. An ageing population and mal-distribution of healthcare providers could make hospitals look at telemedicine as an ideal delivery model. “With regard to telehealth, the country has an opportunity to control the challenges of geography by using videoconferencing. There are countries that are far advanced in the delivery of telemedicine and those who have not scratched the surface yet,” said Emerson.
Therefore India is crucial in the company’s business development plan. The country has the key demographics and geography to maximize videoconferencing benefits. A visible trend is the integration of videoconferencing in the workflow of other applications. For instance, video as part of the patient electronic health record or picture archiving and communication system (PACS) movement to the desktop and mobility; cloud based video solutions, he said.