Tele-consultations pick up as patients avoid hospitals

As the nationwide lockdown to contain the spread of Covid19 continues to cripple normal life, an increasing number of patients are preferring to consult with the doctors over video and audio calls. This is also promoting an increasing number of hospitals and clinics to invest in technology infrastructure for establishing tele-consultation units.

The Cloudnine Group of Hospitals, a maternity, childcare and fertility care group of hospitals has announced the launch of its tele-consultation service with doctors. This service has been made available across Gurgaon, Noida, Chandigarh, Mumbai, Pune, Bengaluru and Chennai units of Cloudnine. “It’s our Baby,” a dedicated app built for the purpose, currently has one lakh users. “In the wake the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, the use of remote health consultation can be an effective way of triaging potential cases and also can serve as a form of first line of defense, while keeping frontline healthcare staff safe unless there is an urgent need for immediate medical attention/treatment,” said Raviganesh Venkataraman, CEO, Cloudnine Group of Hospitals.

Given the strict travel conditions even within cities, several large hospitals in big centres are also working at reduced capacity. Max Superspecialty Saket and Moolchand Medicity in New Delhi, for example, are both working with very little staff, with only essential and chronic patients' departments working full time.