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Fitzhugh Mullan Doctors For The World: Indian Physician Emigration Health Affairs, March/April 2006; 25(2): 380-393. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF] [Reprints & Permissions]

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Telemedicine Can Curtail Indian Physician Emigration

Dr Jayanth Paraki   ( 22 March 2006 )

Telemedicine Can Curtail Indian Physician Emigration 22 March 2006
Dr Jayanth Paraki, Consultant Telemedicine Research Laboratory Send comment to journal: Re: Telemedicine Can Curtail Indian Physician Emigration jparaki{at}gmail.com Dr Jayanth Paraki	Fitzhugh Mullan must be congratulated for an excellent treatise on a subject that is complex and contrarian to present and future visions of the global health scenario. I have traveled to many Western countries from my hometown Bangalore in Southern India. It is a revelation that almost 60,000 Indian physicians practice in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia. My question is, Can the overall contribution of this workforce to public health improvement be quantified? Can we lay emphasis on knowledge management and data mining algorithms to assess the impact of this workforce in any area of contemporary public health significance? The future movement of an Indian workforce into the United States, Australia, and United Kingdom cannot be predicted satisfactorily unless a thorough analysis is carried out today using telemedicine as a benchmark. I am currently involved in mobilizing a unique workforce that does not fully translocate from its original position but contributes continually to the evolution of knowledge systems. A Web document, http://www.ontologystream.com/beads/healthInformatics/4.htm, highlights the general direction of thinking that might visibly generate a positive public health response in the near future. But this alone does not suggest or predict the future of the Indian physician workforce in the United States; it does imply indirectly that a positive outlook can be anticipated rather than relying on a negative force of curtailment.