Although the District Headquarters Hospital (DHH) here has begun telemedicine service about 10 years ago, yet it is not paying the desired results. The reason being its dismal result thanks to lack of awareness among the people about such services. The facility could have been very effective during the Covid period.
Due to lack of adequate publicity and awareness among people, the patients while on the one hand are crowding the hospitals, on the other, they, especially the poor, are spending their hard earned money in private hospitals and clinics which otherwise they could have obtained free of cost from the Government establishments.
The service was launched in 2011 in the DHH along with other hospitals in the district yet after a few days of its operation, it was hardly used by the patients and as of now, people have almost forgotten about the service. The local administration too didn’t take interest to popularise the facility.
However, the dormant service was again activated in the district since July 21 keeping in view the Covid effect. Sadly, even after three months of its restart, just 360 service calls, including 27 in July, 138 in August ,119 in September,50 in October and so far in November about 30 were received by the call centre.
And most of these calls were from the patients who were afflicted with cold and its related ailments, said reports. Through telemedicine facility one can speak to specialist doctors over phone from home and can receive consultation as well as prescription for ailments.
One has to call the number issued by the control room. The control room staff would connect him or her to the doctor through conferencing. The prescription given by the doctor would be noted down by the staff (pharmacist) which would be communicated to the patient by SMS or Whatsapp. On the basis of prescription, patient can avail medicine from Niramaya centre, said a staff of the control room.
Since July, the hospital authorities had issued four mobile numbers , two each for the DHH and the medical college. It is widely believed that lack of adequate publicity is one of main causes for lesser output of the service.