An indigenously developed affordable and sustainable telemedicine system

Telemedicine offers a solution for providing expert medical care to rural people in the Third World. However, indigenous development of necessary equipment is essential for affordability to a large number of centres in the country and for sustained service. The present work reports indigenous development of five items of equipment and necessary software for a microcomputer based telemedicine system in Bangladesh rural health complexes established by the Government. The items are: Stethoscope, X-ray viewbox, Microscope, 12 lead diagnostic ECG and Colposcope, and all data can be sent in real time. If the system succeeds it will be a model for the Third World countries.