As the number of confirmed cases of Covid-19 continues to rise in India, telemedicine or online consultation has become the first point of contact for many who suspect they’ve contracted the disease. Companies such as Practo, 1mg, Medlife, mfine and a few others are reporting a several-fold increase in online consultations for a flu or fever-related ailments.
The increased need to seek a professional medical diagnosis along with a feeling that hospitals could be a point of contact with a person infected with the coronavirus is leading to this boom in telemedicine. Such a trend isn’t only restricted to India, as the rest of the world too sees telemedicine at the frontlines of tackling the spread of the virus.
“There is a clear trend towards e-consultations, and people do not want to go to crowded healthcare facilities like hospitals, clinics, labs, pharmacies, etc., perhaps due to fear of infections there,” 1mg founder and chief executive Prashant Tandon said. “People who would typically not seek a doctor for a mild fever, even they now want to be absolutely sure they get professional advice.”
Since the beginning of March, 1mg said, it had seen a 300% increase in e-consultations for flu and fever-related ailments. These calls were coming from across the country — about 600 cities and towns — and not just from the large metros where penetration of telemedicine has been higher.
Practo, another large player in the online doctor-consultation space, said it saw a spike in telemedicine calls a few weeks ahead of the first confirmed Covid-19 case in India. While the company has been ramping up to take stock of the issue, it said 52% of all e-consultations it recorded on its platform in the last week were related to the coronavirus.
Moreover, the number of e-consultations on Practo’s platform is growing at a rate of 16% week-over-week, forcing the platform to look to onboard more general practitioners. While 80% of this demand is coming from metro cities, that from small towns too has seen a huge increase compared to pre-Covid-19 days.
“Things are growing so fast that it’s hard to keep track sometimes, but we’re trying to ensure that every patient can speak to a trained medical professional at this time,” Practo chief healthcare strategy officer Alexander Kuruvilla said. “We’ve got a team of very senior doctors that have come up with a detailed questionnaire to ascertain whether a person should go in for the coronavirus test or not.”
Medlife, DocsApp and DocPrime did not respond to ET’s request for comment.
Industry watchers in the know of the matter said all platforms catering to e-consultations and at-home diagnostics and health check-ups were witnessing increased traffic and orders online.
ET had reported last week that online pharmacies too were seeing a spike in orders for essentials such as face masks and hand sanitisers, apart from other products like immunity boosters.
Read: Covid-19: Search for immunity powers up sales of Ayurveda products
The rise in e-consultations comes at a time when hospitals are said to be seeing a drop in footfalls in their outpatient departments. Similar trends have been seen in several countries that have seen a rise in number of Covid-19 cases.
Telemedicine companies say they are playing a big role in breaking the chain of spread of the disease in these situations.
“We’ve been collecting a lot of data as well, said Kuruvilla, emphasising that online platforms would have a better visibility into the spread of the virus than singular hospitals on the ground.
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