It’s online all the way: The rise and rise of telemedicine amid COVID-19

Last year, a family had booked a tele-consultation at Fortis Hospital in Bengaluru for a patient who had difficulty in breathing. When, at the request of Sheela Chakravarthy, the hospital’s director, internal medicine, the family brought the patient on a video call, she realised that he was barely breathing and needed urgent medical attention.

Dr Chakravarthy asked the family to rush the patient to the emergency unit. He was diagnosed with hyponatremia, a condition which occurs when the concentration of sodium in blood is abnormally low. He was kept under observation and managed by a team of doctors, and was discharged in a few days. He later took to remote consultations for follow-up care.

Since the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, several such cases have been diagnosed via tele-consultation, since people avoided hospitals for fear of contracting the virus there.

According to data from RedSeer, the e-consultation segment grew at a compound annual growth rate of more than 300 per cent to reach a gross merchandise value of $80 million in 2020. “It had a dream run last year led by the organic adoption of e-consultation services by consumers, due to the safety and hygiene concerns they faced with consulting doctors in-person,” says Kushal Bhatnagar, engagement manager, RedSeer.

Doctors, too, were satisfied with e-consultation services, which helped them carry on their practice during the pandemic. According to RedSeer, this sentiment is likely to endure, and e-consultations could be a $1 billion market by 2025.

“Covid-19 is like the demonetisation moment for e-consultations. Once cash came back into the system after demonetisation, digital payments did not go away. Similarly, tele-consultation is here to stay,” says Satish Kannan, CEO, MediBuddy, a digital healthcare platform thaat saw its traffic increase by 60 per cent after the pandemic struck.

Several hospital chains — Fortis Hospital, Manipal Hospital and Aster DM Healthcare, among others — that did not have a tele-consultation platform until March last year quickly adapted to the new situation.

In March 2020, Fortis Hospital set up a backend team, which trained doctors in tele-consultations within four weeks. The hospital has been using the Microsoft Teams platform for the remote consultations. To book an appointment, a user has to visit the hospital’s website, which has slots for each doctor. The website asks if a person wants a video or an audio consultation and the booking is done accordingly, followed by an online transaction for the service.

Within five minutes, the patient gets a message with a link for the consultation, along with a disclaimer that it is not a substitute for an in-person consultation. On the doctor’s side, a reminder alarm goes off five minutes before the scheduled consultation.

In the last 10 months, over 700 doctors at the hospital chain have carried out more than 100,000 e-consultations, and 50 per cent of them took place during the peak Covid months. “The pace of tele-consultations might come down but it will continue to be an important tool for routine examinations, chronic diseases, and follow-up consultations,” says Manish Mattoo, vice-president, Fortis Healthcare.

Health care providers began by offering these services on publicly available platforms such as Zoom and WhatsApp, but later switched to their own platforms. Aster DM Healthcare, for example, developed One Aster, a personalised health care assistant platform available for Aster Hospitals, where the patient can avail of several services with the click of a button.

Its features include online booking of appointments across all specialties and doctors at all Aster hospitals. From online registration, check-ins, and viewing medical history to downloading reports and digital payments — everything is easily accessible. The app’s aim is to offer patients and their families a sense of convenience while seeking medical help.

“The digital extension of health care services, popularly known as telemedicine, is here to stay. Currently, we are evaluating options and ideas to create a 360-degree digital ecosystem that will benefit the consumer and create a sustainable surge for telemedicine services,” says Harish Pillai, CEO, Aster India, Aster DM Healthcare.

Manipal Hospitals also developed its own telemedicine app within four months of the outbreak of the pandemic. The app has been catering to 30-40 per cent of all out-patient services.

“Now most of the doctors are available online, so patients can choose their own doctors, which them gives a sense of comfort,” says Anoop Amarnath, chairman, geriatric medicine, and head of the department of internal medicine at Manipal Hospitals. Patients can choose to have chat-based, audio or video calls with doctors on the Manipal app.

Telemedicine is also erasing geographical barriers and making health care available at homes in non-urban areas. With internet penetration growing, platforms like MediBuddy are seeing some 50 per cent of their customers coming from tier-2 and tier-3 towns.

“Using the platform is just like a WhatsApp call, where we have chat, call and video options. There are also technologies to support the buffering of videos on low bandwidth for rural areas,” says Kannan of MediBuddy, which has both internet and telephone call options. – Business Standard