1,500 doctors serve patients remotely through eSanjeevani telemedicine platform
New Delhi, May 13: In around a little over one year eSanjeevani, the flagship National Telemedicine Service of MoHFW has served more than 50 lakh (more than half a crore) patients. Patient to Doctor remote consultation services were rolled out by the Union Ministry in April 2020 while the OPDs in the country were closed during first lockdown. The eSanjeevani initiative is operational in 31 States/Union Territories in the country and daily around 40,000 patients across the country are using this contactless and risk-free modality of healthcare services delivery.
There are two modules of eSanjeevani:
eSanjeevaniAB-HWC
-
the
doctor
to
doctor
telemedicine
platform-
is
being
implemented
at
all
the
Health
and
Wellness
Centres
in
the
country
in
hub
and
spoke
model
under
Ayushman
Bharat
Scheme
of
Government
of
India.
So
far,
eSanjeevaniAB-HWC
has
been
implemented
at
18000+
Health
and
Wellness
Centres
and
1500+
Hubs
and
by
December
2022
telemedicine
would
be
operational
at
1,55,000
Health
&
Wellness
Centres.
eSanjeevaniAB-HWC
was
rolled
out
in
November
2019
and
22
States
have
started
using
this
digital
modality
for
far
close
to
around
2
million
patients
have
been
extended
health
services
by
doctors
and
specialists.
In
all
over
21,000
users
including
specialists,
doctors
and
community
health
officers
have
been
trained
and
onboarded
on
eSanjeevaniAB-HWC.
The
other
module
of
National
Telemedicine
Service
is
eSanjeevaniOPD.
It
has
been
rolled
out
in
28
States/UTs.
Over
350
OPDs
have
been
set
up
on
eSanjeevaniOPD,
over
300
of
these
are
specialty
OPDs.
Over
30,00,000
patients
have
been
served
through
eSanjeevaniOPD,
a
free
of
cost
service.
This
modality
of
digital
health
enables
delivery
of
health
services
to
the
citizens
in
the
confines
of
their
homes.
Since the onset of the pandemic, the National Telemedicine Service of the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare amongst patients and doctors has witnessed rapid and widespread adoption. eSanjeevani has been performing as a parallel stream of country's healthcare delivery system that is already over-burdened. At the time of roll out in April last year, eSanjeevani was primarily envisioned as a modality to provide non-COVID related health services, however, based on the potential benefits of this application of eHealth the States were quick to design processes and workflows to utilise eSanjeevani for delivering health services related to COVID-19. States have set up OPDs for monitoring and management of COVID-19 home quarantined patients.
Few States are working towards rolling out special Home IsolationOPDs wherein the patients will be screened for COVID-19 and for remote screening purposes States are planning to engage final year MBBS students. Owing to the increasing load of cases, in few States eSanjeevaniOPD is being used round the clock. Tamil Nadu is the first state to record over 10 lakh consultations on eSanjeevani. The Ministry of Defence too has roped in veterans of Armed Forces Medical Services to provide their services to the public in selected States.
At C-DAC's centre in Mohali, the creators of eSanjeevani are working towards adding another innovative feature in eSanjeevaniOPD that will enable roll out of NationalOPDs on eSanjeevaniOPD. These NationalOPDs will enable doctors to offer remote health services to patients in any part of the country.
This will, to some extent help in addressing the challenges like shortage and uneven distribution of doctors and specialists in various regions of the country.
Leading 10 States in terms of adoption (number of consultations) of eSanjeevani are Tamil Nadu (1044446), Karnataka (936658), Uttar Pradesh (842643), Andhra Pradesh (835432), Madhya Pradesh (250135), Gujarat (240422), Bihar (153957), Kerala (127562), Maharashtra (127550) and Uttarakhand (103126).