"Providing quality healthcare to the vast majority of the poor living in remote rural areas is a significant challenge. One of the many ways in which ICT can facilitate health care is through remote consultation, diagnosis, and treatment through telemedicine," an ICTA statement said.
The new facility will be particularly useful to people affected with genetic disorders who might be disabled and unable to travel to the Colombo University which has Sri Lanka's only centre providing clinical genetic services.
Clinical geneticists in the Human Genetics Unit, Colombo can now be contacted online and through video conferencing without the need for patients to come to Colombo for a physical examination.
"This telegenetic project is aimed at giving the opportunity to remote communities to get the best genetic advice available in the country," the ICTA statement said.
The new facilities will be especially useful for people with thalassaemia, which is highly prevalent in the Kurunegala region where entire communities are affected by the blood disorder which causes anaemia and requires regular transfusions.
Treatment of the genetic disorder alone takes up 5% of the country’s healthcare budget, the ICTA statement said.
"There are thousands of disorders caused by genetic defects, some of which are very rare, while others such as Thalassaemia are common and affect a large number of people," it said.
"Taken as a whole, the number of people affected by genetic disorders is quite significant and comprises a sizeable percentage of the population. Since these conditions cause long term disability, the effect on the economy of the country due to the drain on health care and social services is enormous."
No cure is available for such disorders.
The only way to reduce the burden to the country's health system is to provide counselling to affected families on management of the disease and prevent transmission of the condition to future generations, ICTA said.
It said developments in telecommunication and mobile monitoring devices have made telemedicine systems more effective than before.
Sri Lanka saw a rapid expansion in the telecommunication services last year where the sector grew by 59 percent.
The expansion on mobile networks and CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access) technology based wireless networks in rural areas helped reduce the telecom gap between rural and urban areas in the island.
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