There’s Aarogya Setu and now there’s AarogyaSetu Mitr. The two are different and not related to one another at all. The AarogyaSetu Mitr is a new initiative initiated carried out by the offices of the Principal Scientific Advisor to the PM, NITI Aayog, various other organisations, industry coalitions, and startups. Under this initiative, the government is providing the Indian citizens with key services like free teleconsultations, home collection of samples for diagnostics and medicine delivery. The idea is to bring doctors at your fingertips.

To use the AarogyaSetu Mitr service, people are required to first head to its official website (https://www.aarogyasetumitr.in/). The service provides citizens with three options: Consult Doctor, Home Lab Test and ePharmacy.

With the help of the ‘Consult Doctor’ feature, you will be able to call, chat or video conference with a doctor, who can diagnose your symptoms and guide you on what steps to take to get back to being healthy. The ‘Home Lab Test’ feature allows you to call up a lab and get all kinds of medical tests done from home. Lastly, the ePharmacy option helps you with all the required medicines right at their doorstep.

The teleconsultation services will be provided by Swasth Foundation, Tata Bridgital Health and Tech Mahindra’s Connectsense Telehealth.

The doorstep lab tests service is being provided by 1mg, Metropolis, Dr Lal Pathlabs, SRL Diagnostics and Thyrocare. To use this service people will need to provide personal details such as home address, so that the agency can come and collect samples from home. Lastly, the ePharmacy option orders will be fulfilled by 1mg, Pharm Easy, Med Life and Net Meds.

Notably, AarogyaSetu Mitr is not fulfilling any orders or connecting you with consultancies by itself. It just lists services and links back to their official websites. It’s just a medium.