In around a little over a year, the Union Health Ministry’s telemedicine initiative eSanjeevani has served more than 50 lakh patients during the COVID-19 pandemic. Patient to doctor remote consultation services were rolled out by the Union Health Ministry in April 2020, while the OPDs (outpatient department) in the country were closed during the first lockdown, the ministry said.
The flagship National Telemedicine Service of the Union Health Ministry, eSanjeevani, is operational in 31 states and 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, it said in a statement. There are two modules of eSanjeevani. The eSanjeevani Ayushman Bharat-Health and Wellness Centres (AB-HWC), the doctor-to-doctor telemedicine platform which is being implemented at all the health and wellness centres in the country in hub and spoke model under the Ayushman Bharat Scheme of government of India. So far, the eSanjeevaniAB-HWC has been implemented at more than 18,000 health and wellness centres and over 1,500 hubs and by December 2022 telemedicine would be operational at 1,55,000 health and wellness centres.
The eSanjeevaniAB-HWC was rolled out in November 2019 and 22 states have started using this digital modality, so 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 statement said.
The other module of the National Telemedicine Service is eSanjeevaniOPD. It has been rolled out in 28 states and 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, the statement said. This modality of digital health enables delivery of health services to citizens in the confines of their homes.
Since the onset of the pandemic, the National Telemedicine Service of the Ministry of Health amongst patients and doctors has witnessed rapid and widespread adoption. The eSanjeevani has been performing as a parallel stream of the country’s healthcare delivery system that is already over-burdened, the statement said.
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 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 isolation OPDs wherein patients will be screened for COVID-19 and for remote screening purposes, the statement said.
States are planning to engage final year MBBS students for the purpose. Owing to the increasing load of COVID-19 cases, in a few states eSanjeevaniOPD is being used round-the-clock, it said. Tamil Nadu is the first state to record over 10 lakh consultations on eSanjeevani. The Ministry of Defence too has roped in veterans of the 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. The 10 leading 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), the statement stated.
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