The 50-year-old man from Zimbabwe developed pain on the left side of his chest. Naturally, he began to get worried; and adding to the anxiety he was in a foreign country. He had landed in Chennai on the previous day, as a delegate of the Zimbabwean team for the 44th Chess Olympiad.
He visited the health booth at Four Points by Sheraton, the venue of the Olympiad. He didn’t quite expect that he would be able to consult his physician back home in Zimbabwe from right there. The doctor could see his ECG reading and determine his blood pressure – all in real time.
A member of the Mozambique contingent had a different health issue. He had gout and a severe headache. And he wasn’t fluent in English. He was delighted and relieved to find that he could connect to his doctor, back home, in Portuguese.
And they are just two among the several contingents at the Chess Olympiad who benefited from a digital healthcare system launched by two classmates from the Madras Medical College — one, a neurologist in Texas (U.S.) and the other who is an entrepreneur besides being a doctor. These are the early days for their products in India.
Srinath Yeshwanth, Chennai-based doctor, is delighted that he got an opportunity to make use of the products at an event like the Olympiad, in which players from 186 countries are taking part. “We have been able to connect the participants at the Olympiad to their doctors who are based in different countries, including Uruguay, Japan and Kirgizstan,” he says. “Many of the people from foreign countries cannot speak English, you know. So they are happy when they talk to their own doctors.”
Dr. Srinath, co-founder of Cureselect Healthcare, says it is an end-to-end digital healthcare platform in real time. “We can scan images, do investigations, and simultaneously connect with the distant doctor,” he explains. “And the data is saved as per provisions under the U.S. Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. A doctor could login from his phone. My friend and co-founder of the company Easwar Sundaram Jr., is already using the products for his practice in the U.S., where we have many clients.”
As for the man from Zimbabwe, he is doing fine. His pain, it turned out, had to do more with the stomach than the heart.
