Telemedicine Service Platform: eSanjeevani

• 10 Aug 2020

Why in News

The telemedicine service platforms of the Ministry of Health & Family Welfare i.e. ‘eSanjeevani’ and ‘eSanjeevaniOPD’ have completed 1.5 lakh tele-consultations.

• The top two States which have registered highest consultations through the platforms are Tamil Nadu (32,035 consultations) and Andhra Pradesh (28,960).
  
  • Since November 2019, tele-consultation by eSanjeevani and eSanjeevaniOPD have been implemented by 23 States.
• Both the platforms have been developed by the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) Mohali.
  
  • C-DAC is the premier R&D organization of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) for carrying out R&D in IT, Electronics and associated areas.

Key Points

• Telemedicine: As per the World Health Organisation (WHO), telemedicine is the delivery of health care services, where distance is a critical factor, by all health care professionals using Information Technology (IT) for diagnosis, treatment and prevention of disease and injuries, research and evaluation, etc, all in the interests of advancing the health of individuals and their communities.
  
  • Tele-consultation is one of the applications of telemedicine. It uses IT to facilitate communications between a patient and a doctor who are otherwise geographically separated.
• eSanjeevani:
  
  • It is a doctor to doctor telemedicine system, being implemented under the Ayushman Bharat Health and Wellness Centre (AB-HWCs) programme.
    
    • AB-HWCs are envisaged to be the platform for delivery of an expanded range of primary health care services closer to the communities.
  • It seeks to connect all 1,50,000 HWCs using the hub-and-spoke model by December 2022.
    
    • Under the model, a network will be established comprising an anchor establishment, or hub, which offers a full array of services, and will be complemented by secondary establishments, or spokes, which offer limited services, routing patients needing more intensive services to the hub for treatment.
  • Presently, telemedicine is being provided through more than 3,000 HWCs in 10 States.
• eSanjeevaniOPD:
  
  • It was launched amid the Covid-19 pandemic to enable patient-to-doctor tele-consultations.
  • Offered at no cost, this e-health service has made it convenient for the people to avail of the health services without having to travel. It enables two-way interaction and even generates a prescription slip.
  • It is hosting over 40 online Out Patient Department (OPD) services, more than half of these are speciality OPDs which include Gynaecology, Psychiatry, AntiRetroviral Therapy (ART) for the AIDS/HIV patients, Non-Communicable Disease (NCD) etc.

Way Forward

• These platforms can be a gamechanger for people in the rural areas who do not have easy access to medical specialists located in cities.
• Telemedicine saves time and cost. Further, these platforms are in line with the government’s vision of ‘Digital India’ and necessary to tackle situations created by a pandemic like Covid-19.

Source: PIB