MYSURU: While patients in India often waste crucial hours reaching the nearest healthcare facility during acute neurological emergencies, with no assurance of timely specialist intervention, a Mysuru-based neurologist is delivering real-time expert care to patients located more than 15,000 km away in the United States through an advanced tele-neurology network.From routine neurological consultations to life-threatening emergencies such as acute ischaemic stroke, intracerebral haemorrhage, subarachnoid haemorrhage, the doctor is managing complex neurological cases from his clinic in the city.Neurologist Dr Shushrutha Gowda is among a handful of Indian super-specialists providing tele-neurology support to patients in the United States. Every month, he spends nearly 130 hours delivering emergency neurological consultations to hospitals spread across four central US states – Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma and Arkansas.Dr Gowda graduated from BLDE Medical College, Vijayapura, before moving to the United Kingdom in 2002. In 2005, he shifted to the US, where he completed his neurology residency at the University of Florida. He later joined the University of New Mexico as director (stroke) and subsequently served at Baptist Health, Kentucky, before returning to India in 2019.“During my tenure at the University of New Mexico, we were part of an established telemedicine programme aimed at providing specialist neurological care to rural populations, which also included low-income communities, reservations and patients residing in remote and hilly regions. Through this network, I provided tele-neurology support to patients in nearly 25 hospitals,” Dr Gowda recalled.“I took a break from telemedicine during the Covid-19 pandemic because I wanted to bring super-speciality neurological services to the Mysuru region,” he said.“Since the beginning of 2026, I have resumed providing tele-neurology services to patients in the United States. In the US, patients benefit from a strong social support system, which enables doctors to make treatment-related decisions within seconds,” he explained.According to Dr Gowda, India has immense potential to leverage telemedicine more effectively if there is sufficient institutional intent and policy support. “India possesses enormous human resources. With appropriate training of the existing healthcare workforce and the establishment of an efficient telemedicine framework, the country’s healthcare landscape can be transformed rapidly, particularly in improving access to specialist care in underserved regions,” he said.
