Tamil Nadu is set to bring in tuberculosis (TB) medical officers for the national teleconsultation service, eSanjeevaniOPD. The State recently roped in antiretroviral therapy (ART) medical officers to provide teleconsultations for people living with HIV/AIDS, as well as obstetricians and gynaecologists, and is currently working on expanding to more specialities.
Officials of the National Health Mission (NHM)-Tamil Nadu said that as of now, 732 doctors were registered on this service in the State.
ART medical officers and TB medical officers were trained in the teleconsultation platform. In the last 10 days since roping ART medical officers into eSanjeevaniOPD, around 120 consultations were provided, the officials said.
“We are bringing in more categories. During a presentation on sharing best practices with other States, Tamil Nadu suggested that pharmacists and laboratory investigations could be linked to this teleconsultation platform and put forward the need for iOS version. Permanent identity numbers could be issued for patients so that during successive OPDs, we can retrieve their data in cloud storage. The Union Health Ministry has accepted our suggestions,” K. Senthil Raj, mission director, NHM-Tamil Nadu, said.
With the State topping the number of teleconsultations in the country on this platform — achieving close to 43,000 consultations till date — officials were working on adding specialities including medicine, surgery, cardiology, neurology, psychiatry, and also AYUSH.
About the teleconsultations sought during the COVID-19 pandemic, J. Kathirvel, nodal officer, eSanjeevaniOPD, NHM-Tamil Nadu, said an analysis of 18,000 health records showed that the top five conditions for which people sought teleconsultations were myalgia, headache, gastritis, acute upper respiratory tract infection and fever. Some of the other conditions included antenatal care status, lower back pain, cold, and abdominal pain.
They are training village health nurses to create awareness among pregnant women and vulnerable groups such as persons with non-communicable diseases to seek medical consultation through eSanjeevaniOPD, he said.
“The eSanjeevani platform is user-friendly. The Android application can be downloaded and users will have to go through a simple process of registration. They will receive an OTP for login. Token will be generated for general/speciality OPD,” he said. Mostly, doctors provided advice based on the clinical condition, history, symptoms of patients, while those requiring clinical examination to nearby health facilities.
In fact, the teleconsultation service helped doctors identify a number of patients with symptoms of COVID-19 and coordinate referrals to hospitals.