The Promise of Telemedicine Quietly, telemedicine is circumventing the medical infrastructure problem by putting state-of-the-art healthcare within the reach of some of the poorest.

In august 2005, when Dr Vikram Muralidharan was trying out the newtelemedicine facility at his 25-bed hospital in Annamalai in TamilNadu, a bizarre case came up that would reinforce his decision to goin for the new-fangled technology. A tribal, who had been knockedabout by an elephant, was wheeled into Dr Muralidharan's hospital,with lacerated bones and eyes popping out of their sockets.

As luck would have it, Dr Muralidharan was actually on a videoconference with an orthopaedician in Chennai and an ophthalmologistin Hyderabad. When he was informed of the emergency case, DrMuralidharan asked the other two doctors to stay online forconsulting. Fortunately, the tribal …