The Hindu Business Line : Health-wise

Health is one of the most widely searched for topics, online. Now here is more news for health buffs. The TCS (Tata Consultancy Services) Health portal, WebHealthCentre (www.webhealthcentre.com) recently won the Manthan Award South Asia 2008 in the E-Health Category.

Launched initially as a corporate social responsibility initiative, it gradually became a business investment where the company expects to use the learning and code developed for WebHealthCentre for setting replicas of this site for large organisations or hospital networks or governments, allowing them to create doctor-to-doctor tele-medicine consultations within their organisation.

Debashis Ghosh, Vice-President and Global Head - Life Sciences and Healthcare ISU, says, "It allows health records to be stored on the Internet and accessed from anywhere around the world. The site also enables synchronous consultation between patient and doctor via videoconferencing."

The site is free to access. "Currently, the site is supported by advertising revenue. It is not possible to charge for consultations across the Web, as there is no legal framework governing these consultations. The site also provides advanced telemedicine services for specific hospitals that pay to use these services on the portal," explains Ghosh.

Any user can access the site with an existing Windows Live ID or Passport account that can be created on www.passport.net. Once you have registered on Webhealthcentre.com, you will be able to upload your health records to the Web site. Your health information can be accessed from any Web-connected computer around the world. You can also give permission to doctors or health workers to access this information, provided the doctor is also registered with the site. Doctors from various Indian hospitals have been contributing their time, free of charge, to provide second opinions over the Net.

The special students corner on the site is dedicated to medical students. The Student Centre provides preparatory course material, exam tips, online exam facility and a vast quantity of Multiple Choice questions.

Simple and easy to navigate, the portal has information on alternative medicine as well. But this is basic in content. The health calculators are fun ways to check fitness levels.

Says Ghosh, "Currently the facility is compliant with the HL7. HL7 is a messaging standard that defines how information can be exchanged between various healthcare organisations. So, hospitals can provide the service to automatically update the EMR of an individual by using the HL7 messaging standards, from their HIS. Webhealthcentre can also store and permit viewing of Dicom images in addition to other file formats such as scanned doctor's reports and diagnostic results."

TCS starts portal with Web Health

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