Prepare for the New Normal, says the healthcare industry

As each state government tries to tackle the threat from Omicron, its latest variant, the Indian healthcare industry prepares for a hybrid healthcare system.

Hybrid work, popular across all industries today, allows employees to choose when they want to work from the office and when they want to work remotely, depending on the nature of work and their personal situation. Similarly, the healthcare industry too is preparing to consult and treat patients in clinics, hospitals, and even remotely depending on the patient's condition and general conditions.

From being negligible prior to Covid, the organized market size of telemedicine or teleconsultation (remote medical practice using information and digital technology) was estimated to be about Rs. 1,200 crore in FY2021 and is expected to cross 6,000 crore by FY2024, growing at 72% CAGR according to a recent report by Praxis Global Alliance, a management consulting and advisory services firm.

"We are not surprised by these numbers. Over the past six months, we have not only seen a huge number of DRiefcase users storing and sharing medical reports but also an increasing number of app downloads from smaller cities and towns in India. When we started DRiefcase, people would ask us why should they use the app, but today they want to know how best they can use it", says Sohit Kapoor, founder, DRiefcase.

DRiefcase, founded by two investment bankers from Bank of America Merrill Lynch, is a pioneering digital health locker, helping users manage their medical records for more than 5 years now. DRiefcase provides secure, easy-to-use access to personal health records enabling users to maintain their family medical records online and access them anytime in a matter of seconds.

It is a patient-centric platform with an unmatched focus on personal health records that ensures ease of upload and fast retrieval of records. DRiefcase is the only health locker in India that has teams that can scan all your records for you (including radiology reports like X-rays and MRIs) at your house itself.

DRiefcase is the first patient-side app to be integrated into ABDM (Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission) - the Indian government's digital framework to connect patients, doctors, and other stakeholders to facilitate safe and secure movement of health information such as prescriptions and discharge summaries between them with patient consent.

To allow the flow of digital health records, ABDM has a provision of a unique health account identifier, known as Ayushman Bharat Health Account (ABHA address), to ensure that the created medical records are issued to the correct individual or accessed by a health information user that has been granted the consent. Soon DRiefcase will also have integrated the user-side experience of the ABDM (creation of government-issued ABHA address, managing consents for movement of records, linking existing records into ABDM).

While gearing up for the New Normal, the healthcare industry, along with the government, is making all efforts to communicate best practices, including digitization of medical records, that will save lives.

"As a doctor, when I ask my patients details about their medical history, I do so because I need to have a complete picture of their health. Patients need to understand that the human body is one interconnected system - so, a problem in one organ can lead to complications in other parts of the body. Yet, many times they fail to provide details of their medical history", says Dr Ajay Jhaveri, Gastroenterologist, Mumbai.

With digital health lockers like DRiefcase, patients will be able to provide accurate data to their doctors. In fact, seeking a second opinion from doctors and even ensuring the best healthcare for parents and loved ones is a click away.

You can download DRiefcase and get started here.

This story is provided by PNN. ANI will not be responsible in any way for the content of this article. (ANI/PNN)