Centre's e-Sanjeevani initiative conducts 1.2 crore tele-consultations, Andhra tops tally

India’s National Telemedicine Service, eSanjeevani, has conducted 1.2 crores consultations and is shaping into the country’s most popular and largest telemedicine service. As of now, the National Telemedicine Service every day provides consultation service to nearly 90,000 patients across the country connecting a wide range of patients to doctors, and specialists. 

According to the Ministry of Health & Family Welfare’s order, eSanjeevani is functional via two modes — eSanjeevani AB-HWC and eSanjeevaniOPD. The first mode is a doctor-to-doctor telemedicine platform that is based on the hub and spoke model, while the latter is a patient-to-doctor telemedicine platform that provides outpatient services to the citizens in the confines of their homes.

National Telemedicine Service

Over 67,00,000 consultations are completed by eSanjeevani AB-HWC which is being implemented at Health & Wellness Centres under Ayushman Bharat Scheme. In November 2019, this was rolled out for the first time in Andhra Pradesh. It has extended over 2,000 hubs and about 28,000 spokes have been set up in various states.

While eSanjeevaniOPD is a telemedicine platform for non-COVID19 patients and Coronavirus-related outpatient health services. On April 13, 2020, this was rolled out during the first lockdown across the country as all the OPDs were closed. To date, nearly 51,00,000 patients received the served through eSanjeevaniOPD which hosts over 430 online OPDs including general OPDs and speciality OPDs. Some of the premier tertiary level medical institutions are part of the eSanjeevaniOPD like AIIMS in Bathinda (Punjab), Bibinagar (Telangana), Kalyani (West Bengal), Rishikesh (Uttarakhand), and King George Medical College, Lucknow (Uttar Pradesh). 

National Digital Health Mission

National Telemedicine Service is bridging the digital health divide between urban and rural India by addressing the shortage of doctors and specialists at the ground level and further reducing the burden on secondary and tertiary level hospitals. The digital health ecosystem in the country is boosted through the National Digital Health Mission.

An indigenous telemedicine technology, e-Sanjeevani was developed by the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) in Mohali that provides end-to-end services. Considering the COVID pandemic situation in India, the initiative of the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare is being augmented further to enable 500,000 consultations per day.

Ten states that lead the eSanjeevani adoption chart are Andhra Pradesh (37,04,258), Karnataka (22,57,994), Tamil Nadu (15,62,156), Uttar Pradesh (13,28,889), Gujarat (4,60,326), Madhya Pradesh (4,28,544), Bihar (4,04,345), Maharashtra (3,78,912), West Bengal (2,74,344), Kerala (2,60,654).

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