‘eSanjeevani’ Telemedicine Service

/ Current Affairs
  • eSanjeevani’ telemedicine service, the platform of the Health Ministry providing tele-consultations, has completed 3 lakh tele-consultations.
  • The platform completes 1.5 lakh on 9th of August and has registered double that number of consultations within a month since then.
  • Ensuring physical distancing, the telemedicine service connects doctors with patients.
  • It has provided essential healthcare at a critical time when conventional medicine is perceived to be risky owing to the nature of the infectious disease.
  • eSanjeevani platform supports two types of telemedicine services viz. Doctor-to-Doctor (eSanjeevani) and Patient-to-Doctor (eSanjeevani OPD) Tele-consultations.
  • The former is an important pillar of the Ayushman Bharat Health and Wellness Centre (AB-HWCs) programme.
  • This was rolled out in November 2019.
  • It aims to implement tele-consultation in all the 1.5 lakh Health and Wellness Centres in a ‘Hub and Spoke’ model, by December 2022.
  • States need to identify and set up dedicated ‘Hubs’ in Medical Colleges and District hospitals to provide tele-consultation services to ‘Spokes’, i.e SHCs and PHCs.