Govt’s telemedicine platform serves 4 lakh patients daily: Economic Survey 2023

National telemedicine service e-Sanjeevani serves over four lakh patients every day and has been used by more than 9.3 crore patients across the country to date, noted the Economic Survey 2023 ahead of the Budget.

The health infrastructure—aided by the CoWIN for vaccination and e-Sanjeevani for virtual consultation—helped in “timely intervention to navigate the Covid pandemic successfully despite successive shocks”, the survey found.

Launched in November 2019, e-Sanjeevani is an integrated cloud-based telemedicine service to enable patient-to-doctor consultation virtually from home free of cost. It is managed by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, and hosts over two lakh providers including doctors and hospitals.

At present, it is operational in all states and union territories across India. Over one lakh health and wellness centres (HWC) in rural areas and 15,465 hubs at tertiary-level hospitals, and medical colleges in the states have been enabled in the e-Sanjeevani portal, according to the Economic Survey 2023.

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Telemedicine service has now become the world’s largest outpatient services system, the survey found.

Further, it found that more than 31 crore health IDs have been created so far under the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission (ABDM). ABDM enables access and exchange of health records of citizens by issuing health IDs and maintaining registries of health professionals, health facilities, and digital health records. 

Over seven crore health records have been linked to ABDM to date, along with one lakh health facilities and professionals.

The Economic Survey 2023 was released by the Finance Ministry before the Union Budget 2023. It summarises the economic developments of the previous year and sets the growth path for the upcoming year.