The top five States utilising the Union Health Ministry’s e-health service — eSanjeevani — include Tamil Nadu (56,346 consultations), Uttar Pradesh (33,325), Andhra Pradesh (29,400), Himachal Pradesh (26,535) and Kerala (21,433), according to the Ministry on Wednesday.
eSanjeevani has been implemented so far by 23 States and other States are in the process of rolling it out. This digital platform has now completed 2 lakh tele-consultations.
“Andhra Pradesh leads in having the most Health and Wellness Centres-medical college interactions/consultations while Tamil Nadu leads in the out-patient department [OPD] services with consultations,” noted the release.
The Ministry said this milestone of 2 lakh tele-consultations had been achieved in a short period of ten days since August 9 when Health Minister Harsh Vardhan held a meeting on the completion of 1.5 lakh tele-consultations.
Two types
eSanjeevani platform has enabled two types of telemedicine services viz. doctor-to-doctor (eSanjeevani) and patient-to-doctor (eSanjeevani OPD) tele-consultations.
The former is being implemented under the Ayushman Bharat Health and Wellness Centre (AB-HWC).
“It aims to implement tele-consultation in all the 1.5 lakh Health and Wellness Centres in conjunction with identified medical college hospitals in a ‘Hub and Spoke’ model. States have identified and set up dedicated ‘Hubs’ in medical colleges and district hospitals to provide tele-consultation services,” said the release.
The Health Ministry rolled out the second tele-consultation service ‘eSanjeevaniOPD’ enabling patient-to-doctor telemedicine owing to the COVID-19 pandemic in April 2020. This, it claims, is proving to be beneficial in containing the spread of COVID while simultaneously enabling provisions for non-COVID essential healthcare.
