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Knowledge must grow from more to more
And more of it in us dwell
For this brain is such a wonderful box
It can digest quite a lot
- Dr. K. A. Hiranandani
Form poem ‘Memories’
In ‘Medical adventure’ (1942)
Antiseptic press, Madras (page. 69)
India has been on the path of globalization for more than a decade now. The successive governments at the center have continued the policy and with changing times, adapted its various laws, policies and systems of governance. Globalization is not the same as privatization. It is a mutually benefiting system of gradually cohabitating with other systems of management and governance of the world. Private sector plays a pivotal role in any globalized economy. They always work for their own profit and for ensuring the same they induce many changes, including technological ones in their respective fields.
Information technology and its current form seen in India is a blessing of globalization. It has affected day-to-day lives of millions of people all over the world and has created radical alterations in the way business is conducted, wars are fought and patients are treated. The advantages of growth of information technology are quite obvious: higher growth, improved living standards and newer opportunities. The central challenge, according to secretary general of the United Nations Kofi Annan, is to make sure that this much adored ‘blue revolution’ remains a positive force for Indian common man, instead of leaving millions of them in squalor, as has happened with other technological innovations[1].
The rear view mirror
It all started in 1991 with Dr. Manmohan Singh; the then finance minister of Government of India initiating loosening of government controls over many fields. That was an emergency imperative step for a nation in e queue for loans with other tin-pot nations at doorsteps of international funding agencies. Soviet Union was dead and there was no financial and technical help available from anywhere. Globalization induction acted as a dopamine drip in a nation under a financial shock. It was also the same time when IT revolution was breathing its birth-cry and setting government controls free acted as cutting umbilical cord of this neonate. New InfoTech firms were established and computers started appearing in offices. Enthusiastic private entrepreneurs started blasting off in mines of silicon and soon the found gold out of it. New opportunities for computer literate individuals arose and it was considered fashionable once upon a time to ‘study computers’ side-by-side with formal schooling. India adapted easily to the new thoughts, new process and new technology again, as it has kept doing for past five thousand years[2].
The mosaic that is IT
Applications of information technology began to appear an idea of formalizing them became stronger. The prefix ‘e’ began to be equated with efficiency, transparency and accountability[3]. Connectivity became mantra for success and number of telephone lines became one of the criteria of defining a country developing or developed[4]. Changing faces of IT soon gave it a new name – Information and Communication Technology (ICT). With expanded vision and unlimited market, ICT applications and IT-enabled services and products started their race towards the last in on the land. Possibly every machine in the world became computerize which augmented downfall of labor-intensive industries. The need to manage information flow on optical fibers networks and through satellite signals gave birth to new branches of education like Electronics and Communication, Information Systems Management etc.
ICT and Healthcare: ‘Just Married’
Healthcare information management and management of healthcare through information is relatively recent concept. It has become know with names like ‘bioinformatics’, ‘cybermedicine’, ‘internet medicine’, ‘emedicine’ ’ehealth’ and so on. Commonly divisible in ‘telehealth’ and ‘telemedicine’, they are defined as follows:
Telehealth – Broad concept including health services, education and research supported by information technology[5].
Telemedicine – Medical care and procedures offered across a geographical distance and involving two or more actors in collaboration often in interdisciplinary terms[5].
This change of face of Indian healthcare system runs at par with globalization. There is a telephone in every primary health center (PHC) now, the basic unit of the system. Some PHCs are now connected with secondary and tertiary care centres and are interconnected also, as is seen from examples of pilot projects in Pune district in Maharashtra[6] and Madurai district of Tamilnadu[7]. What is more important is that the doctors are also now turning to internet and other communication channels which are fast efficient and accurate in conveying the demanded information. Thoughts are also proposed that training of ICT should be imparted to medical students at undergraduate level only[8]. Apart from governments acting to change their way of functioning[3], non-governmental organizations and private corporations are also taking maximum benefit of the ICT revolution. Together these units form a healthcare information system.
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