A DIY Guide to Telemedicine for Clinicians

This book is a do-it-yourself guide for clinicians who wish to set up and run a telemedicine facility of their own. The contents are largely based on the understanding and experience gained by the author as a practising physician, management post-graduate (capstone thesis was on telemedicine) and as a business architect for digital health systems over more than thirty years.

Full of management techniques, tricks and tips written in an easy-to-follow manner, this book provides sufficient information to clinicians looking to leverage telemedicine to augment their range of service offerings that would lead to increased levels of patient satisfaction. Various aspects related to definitions, technology, infrastructure, methodologies and legal issues for setting up and running telemedicine services have been dealt with to sufficient depths for the readers to help grasp the issues involved. Sections on privacy, confidentiality and data integrity have been provided to help allay the many concerns the readers might have in those regards. Additionally, financial evaluations based on realistic-enough figures have been used to demonstrate that telemedicine is a viable option financially.

Although meant primarily for medical doctors, any care provider including institutional will be able to use the contents to plan, design, set up and run telemedicine services that they feel would benefit those who receive their care.

Dr SB Bhattacharyya, is a practising family physician and health informatics professional. He studied in Medical College, Bengal (aka Calcutta Medical College), graduating with MBBS from Calcutta University in 1986, before completing his MBA studies in 1997 with capstone thesis on telemedicine. In 2015 he was honoured with a Fellowship by College of General Practitioners.

He has been associated with a number of MNCs in India as a domain expert in the field of Health Informatics that include iSOFT India, Oracle, GE Healthcare, and currently, Head – Health Informatics, Tata Consultancy Services. In this capacity he primarily functions as business solutions architect for IT systems in the healthcare, pharmaceutical and medical devices domains.

He is Member, National EHR Standardisation Committee, MoH&FW, Government of India, Standing Committee of IT, Indian Medical Association Headquarters, and Healthcare Informatics Standards Committee, Bureau of Standards for India. He is also Past Honorary State Secretary, Indian Medical Association Haryana State for 2015 IMA Year, and President, Indian Association for Medical Informatics for the 2010 – 2011 session.