Lockdown or no lockdown, telemedicine is here to stay, say doctors

Even as the lockdown lifts, clinicians feel that telemedicine consultations with patients is here to stay for the longer haul.

Healthcare providers believe that telemedicine is here to stay and  expect that post pandemic too around 30- 40 per cent of their OPD is going to continue to be through teleconsultation.

Complex consultations, however, are likely to go back to in-patient visits at the clinic as study shows that almost 80 per cent of doctors feel that telemedicine is good for follow-ups.

Endocrinologist Dr Shashank Joshi, dean, Indian College of Physicians and also a member of Maharashtra state task force on Covid-19 said, "From long term point of view, sizeable scope exists for basic and primary care consultations if backed by adequate tech, infrastructure and quality doctor interface." He, however, felt that while the Covid19 lockdowns accelerated the telemedicine acceptance process, however, we may see complex consultations go back to in-patient clinic visits in the near term.

A study published in the International Journal of Science and Research (IJSR) by Aasawari Nalgundwar , Meghna Aggarwal Singhania , Pawan Kulkarni, Mayur Shinde showed that almost 75 per cent of doctors surveyed agreed that telemedicine should become a part of daily practice and nearly 80 per cent of healthcare professionals opined that telemedicine is good for follow up patients.

Joshi said that this also represents a viable option for government and corporates to deliver quality healthcare services to the larger rural population. The IJSR study further highlighted that 67.3 per cent doctors found patient examination and adherence to telemedicine very challenging.

Dr Shuchin Bajaj, founder and director, Ujala Cygnus Healthcare felt that for those who would fail to adapt to telemedicine platforms, survival will now become difficult. "In the coming times, there would be artificial intelligence and machine learning based solutions for patient consultations where the doctor can expect the machine to throw up data from previous consultations of similar symptoms. This kind of analytics can be useful in patient diagnosis. So barring very complex cases, this trend that accelerated during the lockdown is here to stay," he said.

• PRE-COVID - 32% healthcare professionals used to see 50 patients/day
• 39% attended to 20-50 patients/day
• Overall 61% healthcare professional used to consult more than 20 patients/day
• During Lockdown- Only 10.8% doctors seeing more than 20 patients/ day during lockdown period
• 71% doctors consulted less than 10 patients/ day during the lockdown period
• Expectations post lockdown - almost 50% of doctors who used to see more than 50 patients in a day during pre-COVID period, expected that they may not consult the same number of patients as before.

The usage of telemedicine has more than doubled during the pandemic with consumers opting for it across a wide range of specialties from General medicine, mental health, gastroenterology, pediatric care and even physiotherapy, felt Charu Sehgal, Partner and Lifesciences and Healthcare Industry Leader, Deloitte India.

"Based on a consumer survey (of over 400 users across age categories and geography) conducted by Deloitte, users of telemedicine have increased from 21 per cent  to 44 per cent of those surveyed during the pandemic. While there are skeptics who will not replace in person visits with telemedicine, many healthcare consumers are  willing to continue to use telemedicine services post lockdown as well as post pandemic because of the benefits of convenience and time saved," she added. However consumers also expect to pay lesser than in person consultations and want that their personal health data should remain secure, Sehgal felt.

Many healthcare providers (individual and institutional) are looking to improve the telemedicine experience to make it more seamless and convenient by upskilling health care workers and professionals to work on online digital telemedicine platforms, she added.

Significant challenges faced by doctoss for telemedicine consulting
Parameters	Least challenging	Manageable	Very challenging
Compatibility with doctors and patients	18.63%	56.37%	25%
Payment gateways	20.10%	51.47%	28.43%
Patient data being on cloud	15.76%	42.86%	41.38%
Patient examination and adherence to telemedicine	9.76%	22.93%	67.31%