A BRADFORD doctor leading a project providing healthcare to people living in remote villages in rural Kashmir is looking to expand the scope of its work.

Dr Tariq Shah, president of the Health Care 4 All charity, is in Pakistan to develop the Novel Hybrid System of Telemedicine (NHST) project, which originally went live in June last year.

The scheme uses a telecommunication system to provide free medical care for patients, and more than 80 per cent of the 5,000 patients involved so far have been successfully treated in their own homes.

The charity has trained teams of community health workers who visit patients and then via a tablet computer, allow them to speak to doctors and consultants in a central monitoring centre.

All medical care is provided for free, including the video consultation, and any drugs or hospital transport they may require.

Dr Shah, who is in Kashmir working on the project, moved to Bradford as a consultant in 1996, and despite having taken early retirement from the NHS, said he still practised at the Yorkshire Clinic in Bingley when in the UK.

He told the Telegraph & Argus he had spent around £100,000 of his own money setting up the charity four years ago, and was now looking for an additional £40,000 to allow it to expand into two more remote villages, identified as in urgent need of medical support.

Burgen and Sahar are located high up in the mountains and are said to be very difficult to access with virtually no healthcare facilities.

"The project is now fully active, and we have extended services to around 20 villages, all connected through the telecommunication system," said Dr Shah.

"This is a version of the system that has never been tried anywhere else in the world.

"You can't use the traditional methods of medicine, we had to use technology and think outside the box to reach what had been untreatable communities.

"Another plan for the near future is connecting with tertiary care and teaching hospitals and linking with the international medical community for video consultations.

"We are currently trialling this new app, and we want to work with doctors in other parts of the world, including Bradford and elsewhere in the UK, as well as the US, India, and Pakistan.

"This will obviously require funds and we hope our supporters will be as generous as they have been in the past to help stretch our services in these area."

Dr Shah said there was scope for some remote areas of the UK to benefit from the same telemedicine system, such as islands off the coast of Scotland.

"Buildings such as hospitals are just bricks and mortar, and they are of no use if they are inaccessible to patients," he said.

"This form of technology is the future of medical care."

For more information on the project and details on how to donate, visit www.healthcare4all.org.uk.