Govt plans to integrate telemedicine services under single window

The plan involves integrating the e-Sanjeevani telemedicine platform with the Unified Health Interface (UHI), one of the components of the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission (ABDM), according to a letter written by the National Health Authority, the agency responsible for implementing the Ayushman Bharat scheme. Mint has reviewed the letter to the Union health ministry.

The UHI enables interoperability in health services, allowing patients to discover, book, conduct, and pay for services offered by a healthcare provider on any application of their choice.

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Patients can identify and book appointments with telemedicine doctors, get consultations free of cost, do not have to take the hard copy of the prescription anywhere and store all their health records on one platform. The platform helps patients to avoid visits to physical OPDs at hospitals.

Till 31 January, e-Sanjeevani has created 3.4 million Ayushman Bharat Health Account (ABHA) health IDs and linked 4.5 million records across all states and Union territories, said the letter.

"The proposed e-Sanjeevani-UHI integration will enable citizens to discover doctors for tele-consultations and schedule appointments instantly through any UHI-enabled End User Application (EUA). The integration with UHI will increase and democratise access to e-sanjeevani's valuable service to a broader set of citizens," the letter said.

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Queries sent to the health ministry remained unanswered till press time. 

The e-Sanjeevani platform consists of two modules: e-Sanjeevani OPD for facilitating doctor-to-patient consultations remotely and e-Sanjeevani AB-HWC to connect health and wellness centres with specialist doctors for better healthcare accessibility in remote areas. A total of 318.6 million teleconsultations were conducted till 31 December 2024.

In the future, patients can avail such services using any UHI-enabled mobile application, expanding e-sanjeevani's telemedicine services to more citizens.

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"E-sanjeevani is telemedicine platform and UHI is just like UPI. For example--if you are using any application, lets' say Arogya Setu, and you also want to use e-Sanjeevani. In that case, Arogya Setu and e-Sanjeevani have to be integrated with UHI," said an official aware of the plan. "Other platforms can integrate with UHI. And now, if we put any search for a paediatrician, the Arogya Setu will push it to UHI, which will broadcast it to all other integrators, and they will respond with the list of paediatrician and the patient can avail teleconsultation as needed." 

UHI is just like Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) for health, the official said.