A health kiosk is a booth with built-in medical instruments that checks blood pressure, blood sugar, weight and other basic measures, in places that have no clinic nearby. It is also called a health ATM or a telemedicine kiosk. Many kiosks also connect the person to a doctor by video call, from inside the booth.
A kiosk usually holds a set of instruments joined to one computer with a touch screen. These include a blood pressure cuff, a weighing scale, a height sensor and a thermometer. A pulse oximeter measures blood oxygen through a fingertip, and a glucose meter tests a drop of blood from a finger prick. Some kiosks also record an ECG or test haemoglobin. An attendant, often a health worker trained to run the kiosk, helps each person use it. Each test takes a minute or two, and the full set about 15 minutes.
Kiosks are placed where people already gather: gram panchayat offices, railway stations, factories, office buildings and pharmacies. Consider a kiosk at a gram panchayat office in a village in Rajasthan, where the nearest doctor is 30 km away. A 48-year-old farmer comes in for a check. The kiosk measures his blood pressure at 162/100 and his blood sugar at 245 mg/dL. Both are high. The kiosk prints a report, which he also receives by SMS. The attendant then connects him by video call to a doctor in the city, through a telemedicine app. The doctor sees his readings on her own screen and asks him a few questions. She asks him to have a full blood test at the district hospital and may prescribe a medicine. If the kiosk records an ECG, it can send it to a remote ECG interpretation service for a specialist's reading.
High blood pressure and diabetes are very common in India, and many people do not know they have them. A kiosk finds some of them early. The chronic condition can then be managed before it damages the heart, kidneys or eyes. Records from a kiosk can be linked to the person's ABHA, India's digital health ID, so that a later doctor can see them.
A kiosk does not replace a clinic. It cannot examine a patient fully, and a finger-prick test is a first check, not a diagnosis.