Sanjay P. Sood
sood@spsood.com
Sr. Design Engineer, CEDTI, SAS Nagar, India.

R.S. Khandpur
Director General, CEDTI, New Delhi / Director, CEDTI, SAS Nagar, India.

The introduction of telemedicine technology in India is relatively new phenomenon, some pilot systems have become operational with limited facilities while efforts are on to develop telemedicine systems with appropriate technology approach and network health facilities at the peripheral level for the benefit of patients in remote areas. For the success of any such development program, an analytical approach such as SWOT Analysis is necessary to achieve improved efficiency, enhanced features and maximum closeness to the targets. This paper performs SWOT analysis to study the factors against and in favour of introducing the telemedicine technology in India. The study is based on the survey done by taking the response from a large number of medical professionals.

The response has been solicited taking the following parameters which are basis to the success of Telemedicine programs :

a) Rush of work

b) Computer literacy among doctors

c) User friendliness of software

d) Access to Internet

e) Relevance to their field

f) Institutional support

g) Issues yet to be addressed

h) Cost