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The government's national telemedicine service 'eSanjeevani' serves nearly 90,000 patients daily across the country and has completed 1.2 crore consultations, rapidly shaping into the country's most popular and largest telemedicine service.
The use of eSanjeevani signals wide adoption by patients as well as doctors, and specialists across the country. Considering the usefulness of telemedicine and in planning for the expected third wave of Covid-19, the initiative by the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare is being augmented further to enable 5,00,000 consultations per day. Andhra Pradesh tops among the leading 10 states in terms of using eSanjeevani service. It was the first state to roll out eSanjeevaniAB-HWC services. The other states include Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Maharashtra, West Bengal and Kerala. 'eSanjeevaniOPD' is a telemedicine variant for citizens to seek non-Covid and Covid-related outpatient health services. It was rolled out on April 13, 2020, during the first lockdown imposed in the country when all OPDs were closed. Till now more than 51,00,000 patients have been served through the eSanjeevaniOPD which hosts more than 430 online OPDs which include general OPDs and specialty OPDs. Premier tertiary level medical institutions such as AIIMS in Bathinda (Punjab), Bibinagar (Telangana), Kalyani (West Bengal), Rishikesh (Uttarakhand), King George Medical College, Lucknow (Uttar Pradesh) provide outpatient health services through eSanjeevaniOPD. In line with the National Digital Health Mission, this digital initiative will boost the digital health ecosystem in the country. It is an indigenous telemedicine technology developed by the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) in Mohali, Punjab. eSanjeevani is operational through two modes -- eSanjeevani AB-HWC (doctor-to-doctor telemedicine platform) and eSanjeevaniOPD (patient-to-doctor telemedicine platform) -- which provides outpatient services to citizens while sitting in their homes. eSanjeevani AB-HWC has completed nearly 67,00,000 consultations and is being implemented at health and wellness centres under the 'Ayushman Bharat' scheme. --IANS avr/khz/bg ( 320 Words) 2021-09-21-14:14:03 (IANS)
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