Access to Healthcare – Online and Offline in a Digital Ecosystem
By Digital Empowerment foundation
Published on: May 15, 2023
Digital ecosystem has a huge potential to accommodate healthcare facilities which can enable access to basic medical attention in remote places where enough in-person consultations are hard to find. Especially in India, this can prove to be a boon as a vast majority of the rural population struggle to get medical help and often leads to negligence.
Healthcare is one of the primary needs of India and despite a lot of efforts being put in this sector, it remains one of the challenges and concerns for a developing nation like ours. Smartpur functions on the five pillars of governance, finance, education, livelihood and health. With special focus on health, efforts are made to provide health consultation and service both online and offline. Across six locations of Smartpur (Tijara, Ghazipur, Kollegal, Chirala, Choutuppal, and Vizag), multiple health camps were conducted which provided the community with basic consultation and health checkup.
The Internet reaching rural India has made the use of telemedicine possible. During the first and second wave of Covid-19, Smartpur team in various locations used DocOnline for the consultation by using the internet provided by the Smartpur hub and spoke centers. Keeping in view the same practice and its advantage for the rural setup, currently many locations are using E-sanjeevni. E-sanjeevni, a National Teleconsultation Service of the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare is first of its kind online OPD service offered by a country’s government to its citizens. National Teleconsultation Service aims to provide healthcare services to patients in their homes. Safe & structured video based clinical consultations between a doctor in a hospital and a patient at his/her home are being enabled.
Ranjitha (name changed) from Vizag shares her experience, “The Smartpur’s HealthPrenuer is always available at the hub and spoke center to initiate the telemedicine consultation through E-sanjeevni. I come for the telemedicine here and the doctor has always given me the best prescription. Such initiative has improved the conditions in rural India.”
