The Healthcare Heroes Awards Conclave and Awards 2024, kick started with the first panel discussion on ‘Leveraging the Digital Power Of Healthcare’. The panellists included Saurabh Raha, President, Yashoda Group, Sonia Lal Gupta, Director, Metro Group of Hospitals and Managing Director, Metro College of Health Sciences and Research and Ojaswani Kapoor, CEO, Bloom IVF Group.
The discussion shed light on how digital platforms help the medical and healthcare sector widely in India. Topics like telemedicines, healthcare apps, apps and websites designed by the Indian government and Artificial Intelligence were talked about. Let’s understand each of these one by one and know what the doctors said on it.
Digitalisation And Healthcare
COVID-19 came as a nightmare for the world and claimed lakhs and crores of lives, but we did not stop and lose hope. Digitalisation in the medical field already existed pre-covid but was not as prevalent but due to COVID-19 lockdown, digital platforms helped handle the healthcare situation better.
When asked about the evolution of healthcare digitalisation in India, Dr Raha said, “Digitalisation in the healthcare sector already existed but it was not as prevalent. COVID-19 increased the pace of digitalisation in India. Due to COVID face to face consultation was not possible so we had to switch to digitalisation and start consulting patients remotely. Work on it began long before the COVID spike, but because of the pandemic, digitalisation soared in India.”
Telemedicine
Telemedicine refers to the provision of clinical services like consultation remotely. Sonia Gupta was asked about if India was prepared for digitalisation in healthcare and she replied, “Absolutely, yes India is prepared. Pre-COVID people were unaware about telemedicine, online consultations and so on. But today, the scenario has changed. Doctors and patients are able to connect over video calls and zoom calls. Millions of people are now aware of various applications and websites on health. Government is carrying out plans to promote digitisation of healthcare.”
She was asked if telemedicine is only a phenomenon being utilised by tier 1 tier 2 city people, she shared an instance where digitalisation of healthcare was taking place in Leh and said, “If telemedicine and digital platform can reach mountains, why can it not in other cities? May it be tier 1 city or a village, internet and basic phone I think the majority population has access to. So yes, telemedicine can be taken to remote areas as well. All we need is a stable internet connection and a smartphone or laptop.”
Digitalisation In IVF
Ojaswani Kapoor was asked whether online consultations are relevant when it comes to In Vitro Fertilisation. To this, she said, “IVF is particularly an electric process but yes, as Dr Raha said, COVID made telemedicine possible and we also consult patients online but eventually they will have to come to us for the treatment, only consultation is done online.”
Challenges Of Digital Healthcare
Talking about this, Kapoor said, “Although online consultations are possible, one of the major problems we face is that people do not want to share their reports and personal information online. They fear data breach and security.”
Speaking about data breach, Dr Raha emphasised that the government set guidelines for online consultations.
Bottomline
Digitalisation has definitely bridged the gap between doctors and patients. It is easily accessible and saves so much time but at the same time it does have some consequences too. Dr Sonia said, “Over online consultation, we try our best to explain the issues to the patients and they try their best to understand but it is important to ensure that whenever there is an emergency, the patient needs to go visit a doctor. Telemedicine and digitisation is an addition to healthcare and not a replacement for doctors and hospitals.”