e Health networking to cater to Rural Health Care and Health Care for the Aged

This paper deals with health care problems in India and the possible solutions from the information and communication technologies (ICT) point of view. It first presents the requirements of the rural population, the aged, the chronic patients, and the accident victims, and then brings out the appropriate ICT to tailor to the needs of healthcare as an integrated solution to transfer audio, video, and data through a duplex link and a three level hierarchical system. For data privacy, security, and authenticity, CDMA encryption/decryption is proposed. Wire (telephone), wireless and Internet communications are compared for this purpose. A tentative cost estimation is also provided for cardiology, endocrinology (diabetes), and psychiatry (which are very much prevalent in India and the first two account for nearly 25% of the mortality) specializations apart from the general ailments and availability of general purpose diagnostic facilities e.g., ECG, X-ray, Ultrasound, etc.