BlackBerry-maker Research in Motion (RIM), has teamed up with Vodafone Essar in India and healthcare IT company Maestros to launch the eUNO R10, a device for mobile paramedics thats aids in the early detection and prevention of heart attacks. The dedicated devices record the cardiogram, connect to the Internet and send the ECG up to a medical records server, which then automatically pushes a report to the doctor's BlackBerry smartphone over the Vodafone Essar network. The physicians can also access the application on their smartphone and retrieve patient information.

The device has now been tested on 100 patients during the past year, but has launched commercially as of last week. Nanavati hospital in Mumbai, India will be the first to offer the device.

Frenny Bawa, managing director of India for RIM explained that in the Indian market RIM is well-positioned for growth especially in healthcare where RIM can help minimize the distance between the doctor and patient.

Bawa said that with the eUNO R10 will now help doctors and cardiologists, and empower them when they don’t have computer access. “There are some 100 solutions for BlackBerry that can help people in the healthcare sector,” Bawa added.

Says Dr Krishnakumar Menon, MD, Maestros Mediline Systems: “Seventy percent of the patients are from rural areas – but good hospitals are only in cities, causing a great disability in reaching for timely assistance, which this solution aims to resolve. Doctors who want to avail of this solution, are being provided with a special price to avail of BlackBerry smartphones, to increase outreach of this healthcare solution. The BlackBerry platform was chosen because of its unique module of encryption and push technology, which is the best for sending huge files like ECG, which is made into a small packet and then pushed. We are not looking at offering this solution on other mobile platforms at the moment.”

For more, read this report from CIOL