President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam Saturday inaugurated a telemedicine facility that would allow experts at a top hospital here to examine patients in rural areas across Tamil Nadu.

Apollo Hospital specialists would use a computer network of Tamil Nadu's engineering colleges to examine patients in far-flung areas and advise treatment.

Kalam inaugurated the facility here at Anna University, under which the government had brought all 240 of Tamil Nadu's engineering colleges this year.

"Mothers to be and newborn infants will be the primary beneficiaries of the programme," Chief Minister Jayaram Jayalalitha said at the inauguration, adding that ultimately all rural government-run hospitals and primary healthcare centres would be brought under the common network through engineering colleges.

The networking facility connects most of the self-financing and private engineering colleges to government-controlled institutions like Anna University using ISDN lines.

It was originally envisaged as a connection that would help make available uniform course material to engineering students throughout the state.

The Apollo Hospitals group already has networking facilities with several foreign and Indian hospitals and sister medical institutions in India and abroad for telemedicine.

Now the Apollo Telemedicine Networking Foundation (ATNF), an NGO set up by the Apollo group, has come forward to deliver healthcare to rural Tamil Nadu using the engineering colleges network.

Under the plan, Apollo experts here would examine through videoconferencing local patients in mini-hospital rooms at all engineering colleges under Anna University.

Anna vice-chancellor E. Balaguruswamy said: "The engineering colleges would each adopt several villages around to open its teleconferencing and networking facilities."

After linking seven colleges across the state with the click of a mouse, Kalam watched a seven-year-old with a heart defect and an aged woman with Parkinson's in Madurai become the first beneficiaries of the telemedicine network.

This was the president's first visit to his home state since he took office in July. It was at Anna University that the missile scientist had taken up research work and residence after he retired from government service two years ago.