Assisted Telemedicine Program at Community Health Centre, Dighal (Rohtak)
Regional Demonstration Project
Regional demonstration project for upgrading the Primary Health Centres (PHCs) supported by World Health Organization. The project is currently operational in collaboration with PGIMS Rohtak at the Chiri and Dighal blocks of Haryana. Under this project, the PHCs at Dighal and Chiri upgraded to provide specialist consultations via assisted telemedicine. While these clinics help in improving access to secondary and tertiary healthcare for the population in remote locations, it also serves as a demonstration project for its adoption and scale-up to other parts of the South East Asian region.
Both PHCs have certified telemedicine nurses who keep track of patients’ vital signs and help them schedule appointments with specialists. The programme makes use of digital health tools such as the electronic clinical decision support system M-power Health, the Swatha Sahayak device for point-of-care testing, the Kardioscreen portable ECG machine, and the Digital Stethoscope.
The BRIDGE Centre for Digital Health at the Centre for Chronic Disease Control (CCDC) is delighted to announce the launch of the Digisahayam: Assisted Telemedicine program at Community Health Centre, Dighal (Rohtak), in collaboration with Pandit Bhagwat Dayal Sharma Post Graduate Institute of Medical Sciences, Rohtak (PGIMS) and supported by the World Health Organization (WHO).
Dr Dorairaj Prabhakaran, Executive Director, CCDC, and Dr Anita Saxena, Vice Chancellor, Pt. B.D. Sharma University of Health Sciences launched the program on 5 January 2024. Dr Varun Arora, Professor of Community Medicine at PGIMS, gave the dignitaries a brief program rundown. The attending physicians were given a tour of the apparatus and an explanation of its functioning by Mr Nikki Pandey, Lead – Partnership and Engagement at BRIDGE Centre, CCDC. The advantages of the
technology were addressed by Dr Arun P Jose, Head of the CCDC’s BRIDGE Centre for Digital Health. The program’s demonstration was via telemedicine, with Dr Vikas Bhatti from PGIMS consulting a live patient and nurses recording the ECG and heart sounds using integrated digital technologies.