Digital Care Delivery Will Move Beyond Video Consultation: Pramod Kutty

What is driving the demand for telemedicine, especially post pandemic? Are patients growing confident about the method? 

Telemedicine has been around for over 10 years and it's only since the pandemic that the world is experiencing telemedicine at large-scale. People are realising that there is a need for change. During the pandemic people have experienced digital health in the form of access to doctors around the world by a mere click of a button. 

Unavailability of medicines is no longer an issue and they even come to your doorstep and there’s no more waiting for giving samples and waiting for reports. Even nurses, doctors and physiotherapists come home. There is also no need to travel long distances to check BP/ECG/Blood sugar etc, as connected devices do it for you. So, there is so much more convenience and ease of care. Hospitals/care providers have realised that if they are not already focusing on patient experience then someone else is going to do it. 

What are the advantages of telemedicine vis-a-vis in-person visits? 

Care continuity, convenience, time saving, accessibility in terms of choice of the care provider are some of the key advantages of Telemedicine. Specialty doctors are difficult to reach out in person with appointments required to be scheduled far in advance, long waiting hours and the requirement to travel long distances etc and telemedicine has removed these impediments.

Telemedicine has also been shown to improve patient outcomes as it allows specialty doctors to have the chance for closer, more frequent interactions with their patients, resulting in patient satisfaction and better health outcomes. Importantly, telemedicine also stands out in keeping away and preventing contagious diseases from spreading around. 

What kind of role is tech playing in telemedicine? What will be the next set of growth curves in this space? 

In Telemedicine, technology acts as the enabler for care delivery. Today, with the majority of the doctors being in urban areas, technology is the only tool that can bring patients from across the country to these doctors. Internet enabled devices, Network – 5G, Fibre, Technical literacy, Digital access to patient data through ABHA etc are some of the advancements that we are going to see in the immediate future. 

While telemedicine today is more about video calls, this is only the start. Telemedicine will complement in-person visits in areas of rehabilitation, home care, virtual reality, remote patient monitoring, artificial intelligence in mental health, patient well-being etc. 

We have been fortunate to experience many of the advancements from fixed lines to mobile phones, feature phones to smartphones, working from office to work from anywhere. Similarly care delivery will also see huge upgrades along with in-person care which is the gold standard. 

What do you think are the disadvantages of telemedicine at this point? How can the industry overcome some of these drawbacks? 

 There are 2 sides to everything. Instead of looking at it as disadvantages, we would like to look at it as challenges. Some of the challenges we see are network, technology and attitude towards change or adopting anything new, both from the medical fraternity and patients. 

Covid has been the biggest change agent for digital adoption globally. As the situation has improved and people have started visiting hospitals more, the talk about digital health/telemedicine has improved from where it was. So, in the last 2 years people have experienced alternative methods of care delivery, medicine delivery, phlebotomists coming home for collecting samples, digital reports, insurance companies reimbursing telemedicine consulting and much more. The future is exciting and we are so glad to be in the thick of this growth phase. 

Can you give me a sense of the evolution of this concept as we go forward? What are the next milestones that we can look forward to, in an Indian context? 

As we move ahead, more patients and doctors are going to access healthcare online. We don’t envisage online to replace in person visits. It would be more hybrid which is perfect for ensuring continuity of care. The generation today is more comfortable with technology than the previous. 

The choice of care providers will get even better and health data will be accessible more easily through remote monitoring devices. Digital care delivery will move beyond video consultation as we move forward and care will be delivered to where the patient is most comfortable leading to home care being more accessible 

Also, digital care delivery will be extended to almost all areas of specialisation. Mental health, rehabilitation and primary care centres will also be better enabled than today. 

How will telemedicine grow as a practice in rural and semi urban areas? 

The digital divide will get smaller as we go along. Every day the number of people getting access to the internet is only increasing. If you look at large hospitals today, they are expanding into semi urban areas as they see growth. Having referral centres, primary health centres and engaging healthcare workers at grass root levels are helping to carry the concept forward. Education and technology are going to play a big role in this. Some of the areas that we see as promising are assisted care using video consultation, a hub and spoke model of care delivery, connected devices to collect health data, access to health data via ABHA and patient education and empowerment for areas like maternal health etc.