The Indian government's telemedicine platform eSanjeevani, which completed 300,000 consults in early September, has been allotted over Rs 100 crore for the current financial year. This was disclosed by the Health Ministry in Parliament on Friday. Three states account for nearly half of the allotment: Karnataka (Rs 21.87 crore), Madhya Pradesh (Rs 15.13 crore), and Haryana (Rs 10.69 crore), total to Rs 47 crore. eSanjeevani, which began scaling up as the pandemic hit, is implemented at a state-level under the National Health Mission. NHM has provided implementation guidelines for matters such as the IT infrastructure needed at hubs & spokes, and personnel needed to conduct telemedicine. States accordingly request financial support from the centre under the NHM. As of early September, the platform had been rolled out in 23 states, wherein Tamil Nadu accounted for nearly a third of the 300,000 consults completed. This was followed by Uttar Pradesh, and Himachal Pradesh & Andhra Pradesh, and then Kerala. eSanjeevani was developed by the Mohali branch of Centre for Developmof Advanced Computing (CDAC), an attached office of the IT Ministry. It offers two kinds of consults: doctor-to-doctor and doctor-to-patient. The former was launched in November 2019, and patient consults began after the central government notified guidelines for practicing telemedicine in late March. The Health Ministry disclosed the information in Lok Sabha in response to question by BJP MP Nalin Kumar Kateel, who is also the BJP Karnataka state president. The eSanjeevani application has been modelled on EHR guidelines issued by MoHFW,…
