Managing director of Tata Steel B. Muthuraman (second from left) with Tata Steel vice-president (corporate services) Partho Sengupta at Tata Main Hospital. Telegraph picture

Jamshedpur, Aug. 1: Tata Steel managing director B. Muthuraman today inaugurated a Telemedicine Centre at Tata Main Hospital.

With the inauguration, Tata Main Hospital will now be connected with other peripheral hospitals of the company in Jamadoba, West Bokaro, Noamundi, Joda and Sukinda through Telemedicine network.

Telemedicine is a rapidly developing application where medical information is transferred through satellites for consulting a doctor at some specialised centre.

Patients can now consult a doctor at Tata Main Hospital without coming all the way to the hospital. The doctors at other Tata hospital in the state can now consult their counterparts through this Telemedicine network.

This innovative technology will later be extended to the villages adopted by Tata Steel at all places including the green field projects area.

The doctors and other health care professionals of hospitals in mines and collieries area will be able to participate in conferences, workshops held at Tata Main Hospital.

At the inaugural function, Muthuraman said: “This technological innovation will enable our doctors to serve the patients and the community more efficiently. With this facility, Tata Main Hospital would now try to connect with leading speciality centres and hospitals across the country in order to provide medical help to all needy people.”

Also present on the occasion were Partha Sengupta, the vice president (corporate services), president of Tata Workers’ Union Raghunath Pandey and B. Ray, the general manager (medical services) of Tata Main Hospital, N.K. Das, the chief of medical services (Tata Main Hospital) and senior office bearers of Tata Workers’ Union and several doctors of the hospital.

Chief of corporate communications of Tata Steel Sanjay Choudhry said that Tata Main Hospital can now be connected to other hospitals in the country and the doctors will benefit from consulting with experts in other hospitals.

“This is the first Telemedicine centre in the state as well as in Bihar,” he added.

B. Ray said: “We have been toying with the idea for quite a long time and finally it has taken shape. We would be able to provide better medical facilities with this service to the employees of the company.”

The vision of Tata Main Hospital is to provide state-of-art healthcare services to the employees of Tata Steel, their dependants and the community as a whole.