Following the Union government’s approval of the long-pending guidelines for telemedicine in the wake of COVID-19, the Telemedicine Society of India-Tamil Nadu Chapter (TSI-TN) has said that it will offer teleconsultation to patients free of cost until the situation improved.
With the lockdown due to COVID-19 affecting patients and doctors from reaching hospitals, K. Ganapathy, past president, Telemedicine Society of India (TSI), said teleconsultation would not only be a boon for patients who are in need of consultation, but also prevent many of them from making unnecessary hospital visits.
“Through teleconsultation, we can do a tele-triage, based on which we can identify who needs to visit a hospital and who need not,” he said.
In a letter, K. Senthil Raj, Mission Director, National Health Mission-Tamil Nadu, asked all district-level health officials to widely publicise teleconsultation being facilitated by TSI-TN so that patients who are in need of consulting a doctor are not deprived of it.
K. Selvakumar, past president of TSI, said even many of the asthmatic and diabetic patients would need weekly changes in medicines that could not be done without doctor’s consultation. “They will be greatly affected in the present situation if teleconsultation is not available,” he said, adding that many psychiatrists are also receiving a lot of requests for teleconsultation now.
Though many healthcare institutions were offering telemedicine facilities, lack of guidelines from the Government of India was a hurdle that prevented many practitioners from providing teleconsultation, mainly because of concerns regarding medico-legal aspects.
“Now, with the Prime Minister and Union Health Minister pushing for telemedicine, there will be a great leap,” Dr. Selvakumar said.
Sunil Shroff, president, TSI-TN, said the society was planning an online training for doctors on the telemedicine guidelines in the next few days. “This training is mandatory as per the guidelines,” he said. He added that while around 40 doctors are already available through TSI-TN to offer consultation, he expected the numbers to significantly go up soon.
Dr. Ganapathy said the plan was to reach out to at least 50,000 doctors through the training. He said that patients could access TSI-TN’s website to know contact details of hospitals and doctors available for teleconsultation. The URL is www.tsitn.org/telemedicine -facilities-in-tamil-nadu . He added that doctors who want to be a part of the initiative can visit the website.
