NEWS – To address the shortage of specialist doctors in taluk-level hospitals and reduce referrals of patients to district hospitals, the State Health Department has launched a Bengaluru and Ballari tele ICU cluster hub at the Trauma and Emergency Care Centre (TECC) on Victoria Hospital

HIGHLIGHTS

• Launched through a public-private partnership with the E-Governance Foundation
• Facilitate the monitoring of critical patients in rural hospitals by experts from the hub hospital (medical colleges and district hospitals)
• Four government medical institutions have been created as hubs and 41 taluk hospitals have been linked to them as spoke centres
• As many as 10 tele ICU beds have been arranged in each of these 41 taluk hospitals and super-speciality care will be available to patients with the advice of expert doctors through AI technologies
• Already, 13 spoke hospitals in the Mysuru division and 10 in the Belagavi division have been integrated with Mysuru Medical College and Research Institute (MMCRI) and Karnataka Institute of Medical Sciences (KIMS) in Hubballi
• Benefit – reduction in referrals from spoke hospitals to district-level facilities