eSanjeevani OPD platform of Ministry of Health and Family Welfare has completed 3 lakh tele-consultations. This landmark milestone has been achieved within a short period of six months since its launch.

eSanjeevani OPD services have enabled patient-to-doctor telemedicine in midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. This has helped in containing the spread of COVID by ensuring physical distancing and has simultaneously enabled provisions for non-COVID essential healthcare. The number of high tele-consultations is a testimony of its popularity among the citizens.

With 1,29,801 digital interactions, Tamil Nadu has held the largest number of tele-consultations so far. Tamil Nadu had been a pioneer in the field registering 32,035 OPD consultations by 9^th August and 56,346 consultations by the 19^th of the same month. The State had registered nearly one lakh consultations (97,204) by 8^th September. The platform had provided essential healthcare to the State, one of the worst affected by COVID-19, at a critical time when conventional medicine was perceived to be risky owing to the nature of the infectious disease.

Tami Nadu is followed by Uttar Pradesh (96,151 consultations), Kerala (32,921 consultations) and Uttarakhand (10,391 consultations). These four States account for 2,69,264 tele-consultations (89.75% of total consultations).

With on boarding of Gujarat and UT of Jammu and Kashmir on eSanjeevaniOPD and Chhattisgarh on eSanjeevani (AB-HWC) the total no. of States and UTs using eSanjeevani has gone up to 26. Around 4,600 doctors have been trained on eSanjeevaniOPD and on an average over 6000 consultations / day are recorded in eSanjeevani’s national network.

The aspect that makes eSanjeevani telemedicine platform special is that the Operations and Management of the platform has been organised in a very methodological manner. A close and an efficient connect is maintained between the States and the implementing agency (C-DAC Mohali). This enables quick feedback from the users which helps the implementing team to make quick optimisations. Accordingly, eSanjeevani is not only consistently increasing with respect to its efficiency / productivity but it is also getting enriched with newer functionalities and features as required by the users in the States.

eSanjeevani platform has enabled two types of telemedicine services viz. Doctor-to-Doctor (eSanjeevani) and Patient-to-Doctor (eSanjeevani OPD) Tele-consultations. The former is being implemented through Ayushman Bharat Health and Wellness Centre (AB-HWC). It aims to implement tele-consultation in all 1.5 lakh HWCs in conjunction with identified Medical College hospitals in a ‘Hub and Spoke’ model. States have identified and set up dedicated ‘Hubs’ in Medical Colleges and District hospitals to provide tele-consultation services to ‘Spokes’, i.e SHCs, PHCs and HWCs.

Health Ministry rolled out the second tele-consultation service ‘eSanjeevani OPD’ enabling patient-to-doctor telemedicine owing to the COVID-19 pandemic in April 2020. This has proved a boon in containing the spread of COVID while simultaneously enabling provisions for non-COVID essential healthcare.

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MV/SJ

HFW/eSanjeevaniOPD crosses 3 lakhs/24Spetember2020/3