Karnataka: Telemedicine fails to ring in change

Bengaluru: Despite the many hospitals offering telemedicine in Karnataka, it has failed to provide quality health care, especially for the poor due to various reasons, including poor planning, according to the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) report for  2016.

Noting that  Karnataka has two mobile clinics and telemedicine is provided by eight of its  private hospitals, 27 government hospitals and 14 specialist hospitals, the report says the scheme has still failed to deliver as promised.

One reason, according to the report, is the space commission’s failure to approve the use of mobile vans for the telemedicine programme. Also,  of the 389 networks established, only 150 are operational and there is inadequate connectivity to remote and interior areas for the project to be successful, the report adds. It found the selection of super speciality and private hospitals for the programme arbitrary as well.

Welcoming the CAG report, officers, who were part of implementing the scheme in Karnataka, say it is an eye-opener "The plan was to take  the best of medical facilities to the poor in remote areas. That’s why the Chamarajnagar district hospital was selected. It is attached to a medical college too. But unfortunately the scheme was not implemented effectively," said an officer.

In another report on the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) , CAG found  that it was responsible for some wasteful expenditure. Recalling that the authority entered into a contract with M/s Wipro Limited in May 2011 for ‘Supply, Installation and Commissioning of Servers, Storage Systems, Security Systems and Accessories with Incidental Services’ in its Data Centres at  Bengaluru and Delhi/NCR at a cost of Rs 134.28 crore, the report said both agencies later deviated from the terms of the original contract terms and entered into a fresh Annual Maintenance Contract  (AMC) retrospectively, leading to an avoidable expenditure of Rs 4.92 crore