siliconindia | | November 202019medicine includes, but is not limited to, online consulta-tion between doctor and patient over a digital platform. This can be done in two ways, one is through personal video calling and secondly by registering oneself on an online doctor portal. This method of communication is very time and resource-saving as the patient does not need to travel and wait outside the doctor's clinic. All they have to do is book an appointment with the doctor online, by paying the fee and check in the app at the time allotted. This has been a great boon in the COVID pandemic as online consultation saves patient from unnecessary expo-sure to infections at the hospital or during the travel for the same. Similarly, the doctor saves themselves and their staff and patients from similar exposure. Telemedicine was available for the last few years but was not popular amongst the masses. But with guide-lines by the government of India and the erstwhile MCI along with the availability of affordable data connectivi-ty, the field of telemedicine is gazing towards exponen-tial growth. The credit of rising of telemedicine goes to the COVID pandemic but it is definitely going to be a game-changer in rural healthcare. It is not a hidden fact, that the health infrastructure in rural India is inadequate and overburdened. Apart from government hospitals and dispensaries, one can hardly find any medical specialist in most of these areas. Ignorance and mushrooming of quackery add to the woes of rural patients. Solving this problem, over the last few years, various online portals have come up, where one can find a medical specialist for online consultations. Similarly, many doctors are avail-able on various social media platforms like WhatsApp, Instagram for consults. Furthermore, specialised portals like DOCTERZ.COM, PRACTO, and DOCSAPP provide a more refined list of doctors to consult online. Neverthe-less, many state governments have already started provid-ing online consultation to the patients. This has greatly increased acceptability of the concept, amongst both, doc-tors and patients.Furthermore, governments can use this medium to provide mother-child health services to pregnant ladies and their newborn kids. The government can also utilise telemedicine to provide health services and guidance to adolescents under programmes like ARSH. As per my opinion, a centralised command centre should be estab-lished where specialists can be employed to provide on-line consultations to patients visiting various peripheral government health facilities, under supervision of health-care worker at that facility. This will greatly reduce the cost both for the patient and the provider. Moreover, time-ly intervention by early screening and detection will be possible. Indeed at many places ICUs are being monitored by intensivists from a centralised command centre. Lab investigation and radiological reporting are also being done over a Telehealth portal by experts sitting far away. As we get to see new gadgets every fortnight, time is not far when we will get to carry smartphones or fitness bands which can monitor armature health parameters and share them with the doctor in real-time. But things are not as simple and easy as they appear to be. One needs to understand that the good connectivity across the country is still unavailable, hence, the digital infrastructure needs to be strengthened. Also, the mobile apps or portals should be user-friendly, most importantly in vernacular languages, only then a revolutionary trans-formation in rural healthcare is possible. Another aspect which needs attention is payment parity between online consults and in-clinic visits. Methodologies need to be de-signed in such a way that equal weightage is given to an e-prescription and an in-clinic prescription for issues per-taining to insurance and medical-legal aspects. This will play a pivotal role in evolution of this concept.To summarise, the journey of Telehealth has just be-gun. Social distancing and lockdowns have made us un-derstand the need and utility of telemedicine. The world will recover soon from the pandemic but that telemedi-cine is going to stay and rather grow exponentially. It will be a big contributor to the State's economy and the med-ical tourism industry. All we need to do as entrepreneurs, doctors and patients is to constantly work and innovate to make telemedicine an important and useful tool in the health delivery systems, try to figure out its drawbacks and solve them with effective solutions. Thus, making the world a healthier place to live. One needs to understand that the good connectivity across the country is still unavailable, hence, the digital infrastructure needs to be strengthened
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