Telemedicine is the practice of consulting a doctor from a distance, by video call, voice call or chat, instead of in person. In India, it is usually called teleconsultation or an online consultation. It became common in India in 2020, when the government issued guidelines that allow registered doctors to consult and prescribe online.
It matters in India because most specialists work in the large cities. Consider a schoolteacher in a small town in Odisha with a skin problem that will not go away. The nearest skin specialist is a day's travel away. Instead, she opens an app one evening and talks to a specialist on a video call. The medicine arrives at her door two days later, and a lab collects a blood sample from her home.
This zone holds three kinds of service. A telemedicine app offers consultations with doctors of many kinds, with medicines and lab tests ordered from the same screen. Employers often pay for it as a health benefit for their staff. A direct-to-consumer telehealth service is an online clinic for one need, such as skin, sexual health or pregnancy, which also sells its own products. Online therapy offers counselling with a trained counsellor by chat, call or video.
An online consultation now often begins with an AI. An AI symptom checker asks about the patient's symptoms and history, and suggests what kind of doctor the patient needs. Sorting patients in this way is a form of triage.
The patient's history is also starting to travel with the patient. Under the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission, each person can get an ABHA number. With the patient's consent, records from consultation apps, labs, pharmacies and hospitals can be linked to it. So a doctor on a video call can see the patient's earlier reports. The medicines and tests come from an online pharmacy and from home sample collection.