Virtual clinic: A telemedicine proposal for remote areas of Pakistan

In this paper, a proposal for telemedicine approach in the rural areas of Pakistan is presented where healthcare facilities are not sufficient due to non availability of doctors and medical staff. On the other hand 80% of the female students join medical colleges and out of which only 10% to 15% join medical field as profession. Our proposal is to connect these rural areas with these non practicing lady doctors through any communication media whether it is internet, GSM, WiMAX, Satellite etc. For this sake virtual clinics will be established in the remote sites, patients will visit these clinics a nursing staff would be available to take all necessary information that will be sent by a smart phone to a registered doctor through a central system. Doctor in return would prescribe and prescription will be sent back by smart phone to virtual clinic via same central system. A prototype of the proposal is established and survey results are presented for viability of the proposal.