Telemedicine Programme is an innovative process of synergising benefits of Satellite communication technology and information technology with Biomedical Engineering and Medical Sciences to deliver the health care services to the remote, distant and under served regions of the country.

Providing healthcare to India's over one billion population of which about 75 percent live in villages, is a formidable task. About 75 percent of the doctors practice in urban areas and 23 percent in semi-urban areas. This leaves just 2 percent of the qualified doctors, who are attached to about 23,000 primary health and 3000 community health centers, to attend to 70 percent of the population living in villages.

ISRO’s telemedicine pilot project was started in the year 2001 with the aim of introducing the telemedicine facility to the grass root level population as a part of proof of concept technology demonstration. The telemedicine facility connects the remote District Hospitals/Health Centres with Super Specialty Hospitals in cities, through the INSAT Satellites for providing expert consultation to the needy and underserved population.

Presently, ISRO’s Telemedicine Network has enabled 382 Hospitals with the Telemedicine facility. 306 Remote/Rural/District Hospital/Health Centres and 16 Mobile Telemedicine units are connected to 60 Super Speciality Hospitals located in the major cities. The mobile vans are extensively used for tele-ophthalmology, diabetic screening, mammography, childcare and community health. The Mobile Teleopthalmology facilities provide services to the rural population in ophthalmology care including village level eye camps, vision screening for Cataract /Glaucoma / Diabetic Retinopathy.