Rohit Shishodia
Tamil Nadu has become the state seeking the highest number of online consultations through the Union Health Ministry’s eSanjeevani and eSanjeevaniOPD platforms, the national telemedicine initiative which was initiated by the ministry in April 2020 during the lockdown.

The southern state has recorded 259904 tele consultations, followed by Uttar Pradesh's 219715 and Kerala's 58000. The ministry has informed that in a landmark achievement, eSanjeevani completed 8 lakh consultations on November 20, 2020.

The last 2 lakh consultations have been recorded barely in 23 days. On October 28, 2020, the digital healthcare initiative had recorded 6 lakh consultations.

Online consultation in the wake of Covid pandemic is sought after and popular means of seeking health care in order to avoid physical contact while still getting quality services.

The ministry has informed that over 11,000 patients are seeking health services on a daily basis in 27 states and UTs. eSanjeevani is also facilitating some states as a model that can serve patients throughout the year, especially in the far flung and remote areas.

eSanjeevani’s both variants of telemedicine namely - doctor to doctor (eSanjeevani AB-HWC) and patient to doctor (eSanjeevaniOPD) are consistently growing in terms of users on both sides i.e. patients / health workers on the one end and doctors on the other.

eSanjeevaniOPD, the second variant of this ambitious initiative, was rolled out on April 13, 2020,during the first lockdown when OPDs across the country were closed to prevent Covid-19 infections.

eSanjeevani is having a significant impact amongst the section of populace where the travel distance, time and cost have been the barriers to seeking outpatient services. It has served as a viable and preferred option for consulting with a doctor. So far 16 districts have registered more than 10,000 consultations and over 100 districts have registered more than 1000 consultations.

Over 7500 doctors have been trained and on boarded to provide telemedicine services on over 220 online OPDs on eSanjeevaniOPD. eSanjeevaniOPD enables access to OPD services by the patients in the confines of their homes.

Over 100 telemedicine practitioners have completed more than 1,000 teleconsultations and a few of them have logged over 10,000 consultations. As regards patients, over 20% patients use eSanjeevani to consult with doctors more than once. As many of these are small districts, it reflects that eSanjeevani is having equal or more impact in smaller districts.

Union Health Ministry, along with state and union territories governments, is making rapid strides to continuously optimise the utilisation of human resources.

In few states same set of doctors and specialists are now providing services on both doctor-to-doctor and patient-to-doctor variant of eSanjeevani. The eSanjeevani team at C-DAC Mohali is extending all the technical support ranging from development, deployment, implementation, training, operations and management of eSanjeevani.