Amidst the present crisis of coronavirus across the globe, the demand for telemedicine is increasing day by day. According to experts from various online healthcare service provider platforms, as the people across the globe are going through challenging phase of healthcare emergency, telemedicine is the only platform for the patients which can guide them and provide virtual diagnosis of their problems and guide them to adopt various treatment procedures to at least temporarily overcome their health issues.
Particularly in India, where the people are kept under 21-day lockdown and not allowed to move freely, majority of them have now turned to taking advises from doctors through various online healthcare service providers.
“COVID-19 has thrown a grave challenge to the entire humanity on this globe. Across geographies, like never before the hospitals are over burdened and not able to handle the patients infected with the highly dangerous coronavirus. Just take the instance of India where our hospitals are ill-equipped and cannot handle if there is a sudden explosion of COVID-19 cases. Already the number of COVID-19 infection cases is getting doubled in just 4 days from earlier 7 days. In the coming days, all those people who are kept under quarantine and observation may also add to the already existing chaos in the hospitals. Keeping all this in view, people now prefer to adopt telemedicine virtual platform to get their healthcare problems addressed by expert doctors through telemedicine or through virtual online platforms,” says Ratnesh Sharma of Call Health Services, an online healthcare service provider from Hyderabad.
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According to Sharma, during this period of COVID-19 challenge, it is not advisable to send each and every person who may be suffering with fever, cold or cough to the hospitals, as the hospitals are already filled with patients. In the current scenario, he says it is very important for the people to stay at home and take advantage of virtual platforms like telemedicine, wherein expert doctors can guide them and based on their symptoms and other healthcare issues, most of the patients can get well if they follow the directions of the doctors, even while they are staying at their own places. This will not only save them from getting possible infections from the hospitals but will also save them lot of time and physical strain.
Another expert from DocOnline also observed that unlike e-commerce, there is not much adaption for virtual healthcare services, but in the current times, people are concerned about visiting a clinic or a hospitals fearing infection with coronavirus. Amidst this coronavirus crisis, not only the demand for online and telemedicine platforms has increased but the demand for delivering medicines at home has also jumped up to 300-400 per cent.
“To provide services to the patients who may have contracted with coronavirus, we at DocOnline healthcare have developed an automated software platform called Chatbot, using this one can quickly evaluate if their symptoms require further investigation. We are also planning to provide services of our in house doctors if any patient really needs help to manage their critical health condition,” says Markus Moding, CEO of DocOnline.
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The Call Health Telemedicine platforms have also come out with a hipline, wherein they are providing free doctor consultation for people with any COVID-19 symptoms. “During the past two months we have seen a surge in demand for online healthcare services, not just for coronavirus related issues, we are also getting calls for providing consultation for children’s and problems of elderly. We at Call health have also provisioned Chatbot, wherein it will help people to self-test based on their symptoms and also if needed our customer care service providers will connect the users to the doctors,” informed Ratnesh Sharma, while explaining about the services provided through their online healthcare platforms.
