Pankaj Mathur, Shweta Srivastava, Arati Lalchandani, Jawahar L. Mehta
Introduction: India is the world’s largest democratic country, and second most populous country in the world. Despite recent successes in the economic front, India still faces many social challenges like poverty, illiteracy, sanitation, gender inequality, and lack of healthcare for all. The healthcare disparity is mainly due to shortage of trained health care professionals and lack of necessary infrastructure in remote areas of the country. Telemedicine as a tool for health care delivery, particularly in the rural areas where 68% of the population lives, has been addressed by the Government of India since the turn of the century using telemedicine. Telemedicine as a method of healthcare delivery has been successfully tested all over the country, and the results have been very promising. Methods: Literature search was done on Medline, Web of science and Google search engines using keywordstelemedicine, India model of health care delivery. Results: We found that telemedicine as a healthcare delivery system has been effectively used in several underserved areas of India, through the initiatives taken by the federal, state governments as well as private sector. Conclusion: Although not a substitute for traditional healthcare system, telemedicine can be used to overcome healthcare disparities in the underserved areas. This approach for healthcare delivery can be replicated around the world, especially in the developing countries
