New Delhi (NVI): The ‘eSanjeevani’ telemedicine service platform of the Ministry of Health & Family Welfare has completed a milestone of 3 lakh tele-consultations.
This landmark milestone has been achieved within a short period of six months since its launch in midst of the pandemic.
“The eSanjeevani OPD services have enabled patient-to-doctor telemedicine in midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. This has helped in containing the spread of COVID-19 by ensuring physical distancing and has simultaneously enabled provisions for non-COVID essential healthcare,” the Ministry of Health said in a statement.
The number of high tele-consultations is a testimony of its popularity among the citizens, it added.
The ministry also informed that, among all the states, Tamil Nadu has held the largest number of tele-consultations, with 1.29 lakh digital interactions so far.
“Tamil Nadu had been a pioneer in the field registering 32,035 OPD consultations by August 9 and 56,346 consultations by the 19th of the same month. The State had registered nearly one lakh consultations by September 8,” it said.
Moreover, the platform had provided essential healthcare to the State, one of the worst affected by COVID-19, at a critical time when conventional medicine was perceived to be risky owing to the nature of the infectious disease.
Tamil Nadu was followed by Uttar Pradesh with 96,151 consultations, Kerala with 32,921 consultations and Uttarakhand with 10,391 consultations. These four states account for total 2,69,264 tele-consultations (89.75 per cent consultations).
However, the total of States and Union Territories using eSanjeevani has gone up to 26, with on boarding of Gujarat and UT of Jammu and Kashmir on eSanjeevani OPD and Chhattisgarh on eSanjeevani (AB-HWC), the ministry noted.
Around 4,600 doctors have been trained on eSanjeevani OPD and on an average over 6,000 consultations or day are recorded in eSanjeevani’s national network.
The ministry further said ‘eSanjeevani’ is not only consistently increasing with respect to its efficiency or productivity but it is also getting enriched with newer functionalities and features as required by the users in the States.
The platform supports two types of telemedicine services — doctor-to-doctor through ‘eSanjeevani’ and patient-to-doctor through ‘eSanjeevani OPD’.
The former is being implemented through Ayushman Bharat Health and Wellness Centre (AB-HWC), which aims to implement tele-consultation in all 1.5 lakh HWCs in conjunction with identified Medical College hospitals in a ‘Hub and Spoke’ model.
In addition to this, states have identified and set up dedicated ‘Hubs’ in Medical Colleges and District hospitals to provide tele-consultation services to ‘Spokes’, through SHCs, PHCs and HWCs.
Furthermore, the health ministry rolled out the second tele-consultation service ‘eSanjeevani OPD’ enabling patient-to-doctor telemedicine owing to the COVID-19 pandemic in April this year.
“This has proved a boon in containing the spread of COVID-19 while simultaneously enabling provisions for non-COVID essential healthcare,” the ministry added.
-RJV
