Seventeen digital dispensaries are going to be established in remote and inaccessible areas of Odisha’s Ganjam district to provide primary medical support.
The digital dispensaries will provide outpatient department services through online video consultation with doctors. The units will also serve as basic pathological testing laboratories and generic medicine-dispensing centres.
A pharmacist will manage the dispensary and patients will be able to video-chat with the doctor. The pharmacist will upload required pathological test reports to the consulting doctor and will also dispense medicines as prescribed by the physician.
In March, the State health department had asked all District Collectors to provide a list of possible locations for digital dispensaries.
Inaccessible areas
The digital dispensary project aims to establish units in remote and inaccessible areas that have no Primary Health Centre within a 5-km radius.
The office of the Ganjam Chief District Medical Officer stated that they had listed 35 unserved or underserved locations for establishment of ‘digital dispensaries’ in the district. The department, however, approved only 17 locations.
These 17 proposed digital dispensaries will be established in seven out of the 22 blocks of Ganjam district.
Four will be set up in Sanakhemund, five in Surada, two each in Khallikote, Buguda and Beguniapada; and one each in Kavisuryanagar and Chikit.
Officials of the health department said that the process to establish the dispensaries has started, but fast and steady Internet connectivity is still a major problem in some of the proposed locations in Ganjam.
Similar initiatives have been launched in Keonjhar and Nabarangpur districts.