COVID-19: Health Ministry’s ‘eSanjeevani’ telemedicine service records 2 lakh tele-consultations

New Delhi: The ‘eSanjeevani’ digital platform of the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare has completed 2 lakh tele-consultations.This milestone was achieved in a short time period of ten days only since the 9th of August when Dr Harsh Vardhan, Union Minister for Health and Family Welfare presided over a meet to commemorate the completion of 1.5 lakh tele-consultations.

In what can be seen as a big push for the ‘Digital India’ initiative of the Prime Minister, the eSanjeevani platform, as per Ministry, has proved its usefulness and easy access for the caregivers and the medical community, and those seeking healthcare services in the times of COVID-19.

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 to ‘Spokes’, i.e SHCs, PHCs and HWCs. 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 has proved a boon in containing the spread of COVID while simultaneously enabling provisions for non-COVID essential healthcare.

eSanjeevani has been implemented so far by 23 States and other States are in the process of rolling it out.

The top five States which have been utilizing the e-health services being offered through this platform are Tamil Nadu (56,346 consultations), Uttar Pradesh (33,325), Andhra Pradesh (29,400), Himachal Pradesh (26,535) and Kerala (21,433). Andhra Pradesh leads in having the most HWC-medical college interactions with 25,478 consultations while Tamil Nadu leads in the OPD services with 56,346 consultations.