Wireless information perspectives for integrated health care

Given the contrasting geographical development and hence the infrastructure disparity in India, communication technologies should create the required environment for harmonisation and integration of services. Wireless data networks together with their wired counterpart could be put to work to achieve access to health care services hitherto unavailable in a geographical area, and improve and extend the existing services. We argue that wireless data could be leveraged to achieve the required integration in various sectors of health. We also discuss the services that the information flow could open up, and the functions of personal digital assistants (PDAs) and laptops as mobile nodes in an integrated information network environment.