Bhagwan Mahaveer Jain Hospital Heart Centre will initiate an e-medicine project within two weeks wherein family physicians and general practitioners can interpret ECG and give medical advice to heart patients with the help of a computer.

The centre will set up a 'Vivus e-Medicine' centre with a network of general practitioners in various parts of Bangalore to help them interpret ECG reports.

The project aims to minimising the trouble for patients who visit their family physician for angina or chest pain. It also focuses on making general medicine practitioners more receptive to technology, stated Dr. S S Ramesh, chief cardiologist, Bhagwan Mahaveer Jain Hospital.

Nasan, a Pune based software company, has developed a software called as 'e-critigraph' for the centre. Through this a family physician can record the ECG on the computer and then transfer the report on the ''Vivus e-Medicine' located in the heart centre of Bhagwan Mahaveer Jain Hospital where a cardiologist will look into it and e-mail his expert advise.

The process is time saving both for the doctor and the patient. All that a physician needs is a modem and a personnel computer for getting linked to the network. The centre is expected to have a network of 50 physicians initially and the project will be extended to the other parts of the State.

According to Dr. Ramesh, when a person is sick, he is most often seen rushing to family physicians before he consults a specialist. For cases who are having chest pain ECG is taken from a diagnostic centre and based on the report, the patient is referred to a cardiac specialist. Now if the family physician is competent to read the ECG report he need not direct the patient to a specialist or even a diagnostic centre instead get all his assistance for further treatment via e-medicine.

There are scores of general practitioners in Bangalore on whom most patients depend upon for medical advice. This kind of technology will help the doctors serve their patients better, said Dr. Ramesh.

A pilot study has been carried out for six months to ascertain the success of the technology prior to offering the programme to the network of family physicians.

The hospital has an arrangement with the Nightingales Home Health Services to do the ECG at the convenience of the patients in their homes. The reports are sent to the centre for perusal by specialists with the help of a laptop. "Since this initiative worked well, the centre has decided to launch the e-medicine within 15 days," added Dr. Ramesh.