With 188 consultations as of Thursday, Tiruppur district topped the State in the number of consultations at eSanjeevaniOPD, the National Teleconsultation Service from Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.
District Collector K. Vijayakarthikeyan announced this in a tweet on Thursday, along with a video tutorial on how to access the website www.esanjeevaniopd.in. The initiative enables patients in the district to get consultation free of cost without visiting hospitals and clinics, thus help curb the spread of COVID-19.
“Such online consultations largely reduces crowd in GH OPDs (Government Hospital Out Patient Departments). For villages, facilities are arranged at block-level to enable people connect to the Headquarters Hospital,” Mr. Vijayakarthikeyan said in the tweet.
C. Jaya Priya, Assistant Programme Manager at Deputy Director of Health Services (Tiruppur) office, told The Hindu that 126 doctors are involved in providing online consultations to patients, comprising 124 doctors in 13 blocks of the district and two additional doctors at the DDHS office at Poluvapatti in Tiruppur Corporation limits. All the doctors are from the primary health centres (PHC) the district.
“From logging in to consultation, it only takes around 15 minutes,” she said. Since its inception on May 15, Tiruppur district has seen 188 consultations. On the other hand, Chennai district has seen only 149 consultations till Thursday and ranks fourth in the State, Dr. Priya said. National Health Mission – Tamil Nadu launched this programme across the State in May.
Apart from ensuring zero physical contact amid the COVID-19 scare, the teleconsultation service will also help patients get the right diagnosis and prescription from doctors, she noted. As the service involves video conferencing between the patient and the doctor, low speed internet can hamper the process, in which case the doctors will use the mobile number of the patients for consultation, Dr. Priya said. “The mobile application for eSanjeevaniOPD is under development,” she said.