Rohit Shishodia

The Indian Health Ministry’s National Telemedicine Service or eSanjeevani has conducted more than 1 crore teleconsultations across the country, an official statement informed on August 24, 2021.

The telemedicine service has been used by the people in 701 districts across India and over 56% of the patients on eSanjeevani are females.

Although the services began in March 2019, it picked up the pace during COVID-19 when people were stuck at home during the lockdown

The new version of eSanjeevani OPD (patient to doctor version) started in April 2020 when a national lockdown in response to COVID was enforced in India

The ministry said that in many states eSanjeevani OPD is enabling the provision of health services delivery for more than 12 hours a day, and seven days a week.

eSanjeevani OPD services can be accessed through a web browser as well as an Android application.

The ministry added that the eSanjeevani network is currently serving around 75,000 patients daily, it is hosting 439 online OPDs, of these 43 are general OPDs and 396 are the specialty and super-specialty OPDs.

“It is noteworthy that even when the internet penetration in the country is below 50 per cent, this innovative digital health initiative of the health ministry has been able to defeat the tyranny of geography, distance and time, and establish itself as a parallel stream of healthcare services delivery,” the statement said.

Among all the states, Andhra Pradesh has topped seeking treatment through telemedicine services.

Doctors from AIIMS in Bathinda, Bibinagar, Kalyani, Bilaspur, Rishikesh, Lady Harding Medical College (New Delhi), Safdurjung Hospital (New Delhi), King George Medical University (Lucknow), Central Govt. Health Scheme (CGHS), Cancer Research Centres in Kerala, etc are offering their services through eSanjeeveeni.

The ministry informed that the National Telemedicine Service which was used for 160,807 teleconsultations in September 2020 enabled 1,650,822 teleconsultations in July 2021.

It added that Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Himachal Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, etc. were the early adopters of this first of its kind of telemedicine initiative.

“In less than a month, over half the states in the country had adopted eSanjeevani OPD and had rolled out remote consultation services for their populace,” the ministry said.