THIRUVANANTHAPURAM:
Kerala, which started to effectively leverage e-Sanjeevani telemedicine service to provide free medical consultation without direct interface with doctors during COVID time, has raced to the top with the highest number of tele-consultations in the country so far.
Logging 3,415 consultations since the state joined telemedicine platform on June 10, Kerala is ahead of all states. The uniqueness of the state is that an average individual patient’s session time is 10 minutes, whereas in other states a call does not last for more than 2-3 minutes.
Moreover, DISHA (Direct Intervention System For Health Awareness), a project of Arogyakeralam, Thiruvananthapuram, ensures that no eligible patient is denied of a consultation. Kerala is the only state to have consultations on all days from 8AM to 8PM. There is a system to do quality assessments of the sessions, which are done by experts.
The next level of e-Sanjeevani will be to bring on board premier institutions such as RCC, MCC, CCK and Sree Chitra Tirunal Institute for Medical Sciences & Technology. Besides a general out-patient department, e-Sanjeevani has a separate OPD for lifestyle diseases. There are plans to provide consultations in psychiatry, cardiovascular and oncology.
At any given point of time there are about 15 doctors attending to patients from all over the state. Every day e-Sanjeevani receives 200-300 calls. The highest number of calls was on July 3 when 303 patients called. A person can use the free facility by logging in to esanjeevaniopd.in/kerala from 8am to 8pm and can call DISHA on 1056 , 0471-2552056 for any queries.
