Telehealth platforms boom amidst COVID-19 outbreak
In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, a doctor’s office is a Petri dish of germs. What with curfew and social distancing, the picture now is murkier.
Nonetheless usual aches, pains and sprains aren’t insulated and those who have regular doctor visits still need to make them.
Patients like never before are turning to telemedicine, or virtual healthcare, to connect with doctors without leaving their homes, Heshan Fernando, Co-Founder & CEO – oDoc, a technology platform that allows businesses to grant their employees unlimited access to remote healthcare, told the Business Times. He said that daily doctor consultations have risen five times over the past month. The deployment – and ready acceptance – of virtual health technology has become possible largely as a result of the mass scale proliferation of smartphones with high-speed Internet. This has made high-quality video transmission possible.
The oDoc platform connects users with Sri Lanka Medical Council registered doctors and healthcare professionals for video consultation, audio consultation, and care through their mobile phone.
“Phone consultations are very much like the doctor consultations you have experienced already. Your doctor would ask you your age, allergies and previous conditions. You would then discuss the symptoms you have been experiencing, for how long and whether those symptoms are getting better or worse,” Mr. Fernando explained,
Industry analysts noted that apps such as mydoctor.lk have also seen their volumes of consults gone up several multiples since the pandemic struck.
On March 31, oDoc launched the National Telemedcine Service in collaboration with the Ministry Of Health, Government Medical Officers’ Association and Information and Communication Agency (ICTA). With this, traffic on the platform has increased considerably. Mr. Fernando added that consultations are mostly from Colombo but within the last month the outstation areas have also been also very receptive. “In the initial stages it was 80 to 20 ratio for Colombo and the outstations, but as we progress into the month, we have seen 60 to 40 ratio,” he said.
The coronavirus is stimulating people, in droves, to take advantage of a service that has been available for years. Mr. Fernando added that he saw 10 years of change happening in this space within four weeks.
Out of every crisis, a new opportunity springs. For telehealth, it may be an opportunity whose time has finally come.