The pursuit of universal and high-quality healthcare services is a fundamental obligation of any responsible state, yet India faces persistent challenges in achieving this goal despite governmental efforts and policies. Notably, the 65th World Health Assembly emphasized universal health coverage (UHC) as pivotal for global public health advancement. Addressing this, a 2010 high-level expert group identified impediments in UHC implementation, highlighting issues such as health financing, infrastructure, skilled human resources, and access to medicines. This study focuses on exploring telemedicine's potential to mitigate these challenges and become instrumental in realizing universal health coverage in India. It aims to scrutinize government plans, critically assess policies on telemedicine implementation, and propose effective integration models, particularly in rural areas, to facilitate UHC. Additionally, the research aims to examine the role of AI, ML, deep learning, and neutral networks within telemedicine, envisaging their contribution to augmenting telemedicine's efficacy towards achieving universal health coverage in India.
Top1. Introduction
Telemedicine has emerged as a capacity technique to address the healthcare demanding situations confronted by India, specifically in rural areas. The modern-day healthcare personnel distribution in India is heavily skewed, with the majority of healthcare specialists concentrated in city areas, leaving a massive hole in get entry to healthcare offerings in rural regions (Rural Health Information Hub, 2023). This disparity can be mitigated through the effective implementation of telemedicine applications, which allow remote access to healthcare practitioners for sufferers in rural areas. Through telemedicine, patients in far flung villages can connect to certified doctors through videoconferencing or other virtual verbal exchange structures (Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDCP), 2023).
Using telemedicine in India has been relatively restricted in the past, however with the increasing availability of smartphones, webcam-enabled non-public computers, and excessive-pace internet, its implementation has emerged as more possible and viable. The tips for telemedicine issued by using the Ministry of health and circle of relatives Welfare in March 2020 have further facilitated its adoption, in particular in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Telemedicine gives numerous benefits in terms of growing accessibility and availability of healthcare offerings while decreasing fees. It performs an essential position in ensuring low priced healthcare for the big portion of the populace that is not covered through fitness schemes. Moreover, telemedicine holds tremendous capability in addressing the challenges of healthcare infrastructure in rural regions (Hanson, C. H. & Altice, F. L., 2023). The usage of telemedicine can help bridge the gap in healthcare offerings by connecting remote areas to the healthcare gadget, allowing well timed prognosis, treatment, and monitoring
This research will compare and contrast the current status of telemedicine in universal health care in India and discuss potential ways to improve its implementation.
Telemedicine plays a pivotal position in bolstering India's conventional fitness coverage (UHC) by using addressing diverse challenges and enhancing the overall healthcare landscape. Certainly, one of its giant strengths lies in its capability to transcend geographical boundaries, ensuring that healthcare offerings attain populations in far off and underserved regions wherein traditional healthcare infrastructure may be missing. This is especially critical in a rustic as sizeable and various as India, where get admission to healthcare may be a giant venture in rural and remote regions (Maroju, R. G. et al., 2023).
The benefit element is any other key energy of telemedicine. By way of permitting patients to discuss with healthcare specialists from the consolation in their homes, telemedicine eliminates the want for hard tour, lowering the associated costs and time commitments. That is especially impactful in a country in which transportation may be a good-sized barrier to healthcare get entry to, mainly for people in remote villages. The fee-effectiveness of telemedicine cannot be overstated. Via minimizing the need for in-individual visits and the related travel prices, telemedicine makes healthcare greater less costly for a larger segment of the population. This aligns with the purpose of UHC, which objectives to make certain that everyone people have get admission to vital healthcare services without facing monetary hassle.
Furthermore, telemedicine enables the extension of specialised healthcare offerings to rural regions wherein the supply of specialised scientific know-how is regularly constrained. This enables in bridging the urban-rural healthcare divide via permitting individuals in remote locations to get entry to the same stage of specialised care this is usually to be had in city facilities (Parth Sharma & Siddhesh Zadey, 2022). Additionally, telemedicine optimizes the usage of healthcare assets. Professionals can serve a larger population without being bodily gift at more than one places, leading to greater efficient use of healthcare centres and personnel. this is particularly essential in a rustic with a full-size and dispersed populace like India.