UK’s NHS borrows ‘remote neonatal care’ tech leaf from West Bengal’s hospitals
Times of India | 6 August 2024
KOLKATA: UK’s National Health Service (NHS), one of the most successful health services across the globe, acknowledged for its high standard of care and affordability, has taken a leaf out of Bengal’s hospitals, thanks to a doctor from Kolkata, whose experience while working in the state’s health centres has now formed the basis of a fruitful experiment for remote neonatal care being conducted by a hospital in Cambridge, England.
NHS, which already funds the system called ‘Locants’, has agreed to fund the scheme over the next year.
Locants could soon be in troduced in some hospitals of western and southern India.
Talks are on with Bengal govt to introduce the system in state hospitals that had originally inspired the model, said Kolkata boy Arunava Dhar, a 2000-batch MBBS from RG Kar Medical College, who introduced the system in UK.
“We are talking to health officials here so that the system can be implemented in Kolkata and Bengal hospitals,” said Dhar at a symposium, titled ‘Med-Fusion – Bridging East and West in Healthcare Excellence’ in Kolkata on Sunday.
After migrating to UK in 2010, Dhar teamed up with another Kolkatan now based in London — techie Ranadeep Chatterjee, a serial entrepreneur and AI expert — to develop the technology and secure funds for a remote neonatal care system that now benefits thousands across an extensive area in Cambridge and eastern UK.
The experiment was launched at Cambridge’s Addenbrooke’s Hospital last year. It is based on remote online consultations in real time and involve online video interfaces between specialists at Addenbrooke’s and four smaller hospitals in east UK. It will be extended to 17 hospitals next month.
Locants, the system followed by NHS in the UK, works on hardware and sophisticated software developed by Arunava Dhar, a 2000-batch MBBS from RG Kar Medical College, and techie Ranadeep Chatterjee.
"The smaller centres have a Locants card fitted with a camera that can revolve 360° on one side and 270° on the other. It offers a comprehensive view of the child... It allows us to instruct local doctors and nurses who can act on camera under our real-time supervision," said Dhar, who hails from Belgharia. The system has reduced the number of kids who have to be taken to hospitals by a fifth.
It was while working in Bengal hospitals that Dhar chanced upon the idea of remote treatment, which now forms an integral part of Bengal's health system.
State health secretary Narayan Swarup Nigam said at the symposium that 1 lakh patients used telemedicine in Bengal a day. "We are looking at technological integration for health schemes like Swasthya Sathi, which is a paperless system. We are incorporating AI and plan to introduce a health ID for electronic health records," he said, adding Bengal spent Rs 70,000 crore on healthcare annually.
UK's healthcare spend was four times India's, while the country spent three times more on clinical research, said Ranadeep Chatterjee, also a consultant with Google. "A lot of startups are focused on delivering healthcare to remote areas through technology and research," he said.
The Bengal duo is collaborating with 'Reach' to extend the initiative to eastern India.
Indian doctors in the UK had enriched the health system there, said Andrew Fleming, British deputy high commissioner in Kolkata. "Just as an Indian playing country cricket benefits from the exposure to swing and overcast conditions in England, Indian doctors working in NHS, too, gain from different clinical practices, patients and an integrated system," he said.
The symposium was attended by physician and filmmaker Kamaleshwar Mukherjee and RP Goenka Group president Rupali Basu. Author Shirshendu Mukhopadhyay and paediatrician Arun Singh were felicitated.