28% tele-ICU spoke hospitals in Karnataka not functional, 1 fully deactivated

Feb 11,2024

BENGALURU: Two tele-ICU clusters were opened in the state recently, with the govt claiming the initiative will enable hub hospitals to address shortage of specialists in  spoke hospitals in the hinterland. However, what was glossed over was the fact that only 29 of the 40 state-run tele-ICU spoke hospitals in Karnataka are currently functional, while the rest are dormant.

Data accessed by STOI shows the tele-ICU spoke hospitals in Bengaluru Rural, Chikkaballapur, Kolar, Shivamogga Chamarajanagar, Gadag, Kalaburagi, Koppal, Raichur, and Yadgir are dormant. These spoke hospitals come under Bengaluru, Mysuru, Hubballi, and Ballari clusters. One spoke hospital at Santemarahalli in Chamarajanagar district has been deactivated.

Tele-ICU clusters are based on the hub-and-spoke model wherein one big hospital acts as the hub and provides services to spoke hospitals in taluks and smaller towns. Karnataka’s initiative also includes two smart ICUs in Ballari district that facilitate AI-based interventions for critically ill patients.

Sources part of the hub-and-spoke model admit that tele-ICUs have been non-starters in the state as taluk hospitals have misplaced CDs and pen drives loaded with CARE (computer-aided regulation engineering) software distributed to them. Ideally they should’ve filed FIRs but they have not done it, they added.

Dr Vasanth Kumar DE, state nodal officer, tele-ICU, told STOI, “We’re facing problems with internet connectivity. Our ICUs require private internet connection.” Most of the taluk hospitals were given KSWAN (Karnataka State Wide Area Network) earlier.

Another official said CARE requires hospitals to have open internet and not KSWAN which is a closed network that only allows whitelisted domain access. CARE is still in active development and there are software releases every week to meet the demands on the field and KSWAN does not allow such dynamic systems to be whitelisted. Once CARE crosses the active development stage, enabling the same over KSWAN could be considered, the official explained.

Source: TOI