Considering the widening gap in coverage and rising cost of healthcare services in the country, telemedicine which offers remote diagnosis, monitoring and treatment of patients via videoconferencing or Internet has the potential to address the gap, said Amit Munjal, co-founder and chief executive officer, Doctor Insta, India's first video medicine company, which is doing around 900 consults per day.

In the existing healthcare system, there is a wide range of problems pertaining to doctor availability and access to healthcare – several people complain of having difficulty taking time off work to visit their primary care doctor. Besides this, shortage of doctors in rural areas as compared to urban areas leads to considerable travel expenditures of rural patients. This is very difficult for the chronically ill, who require complex and expensive long-term monitoring and treatment strategies. Telemedicine offers best solutions to address these shortcomings in the existing healthcare system, he said.

Talking about hurdles faced by telemedicine growth in India, Munjal said “One major speed bump is the adoption and engagement of telemedicine in India. Although Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Indian government strongly support telemedicine and independent research studies show that 70 per cent of the OPD cases do not require any in-person visit, yet people in India may feel the need of going to OPD. Slowly and steadily people are accepting this fact and soon with increasing Internet/Smartphone penetration and lower data costs, telemedicine will disrupt the status quo of Indian healthcare system.”

Telemedicine in India is in early stage. Talking about steps being initiated by Doctor Insta to increase telemedicine traffic, he said “The idea, at this point of time, is not to maximize the topline but to increase customer adoption and engagement. As most of the tech startups do, we are providing the first consultation free or at deep discount to new users. Doctor Insta saves people 3-4 hours of time lost in traffic, parking and waiting in the waiting rooms and is available 24x7 providing a lot of convenience and Instant benefit to patients.”

At present we have a panel of 40 allopathic doctors and plan to scale up to 200 doctors by end of 2016. Besides this, we are also planning to launch alternative medicine platform (AYUSH) in the next 12 months. The platform is going to work similar to the existing allopathic platform with specialists in Ayurveda, Homoeopathy, etc. Currently, users having internet or smartphone (Android or iOS) can access to allopathic doctors via Doctor Insta platform in just under 3 minutes, he opined.

The company is planning to launch 500 Health Kiosks across the country. In the initial phase, it will set up 10 Kiosks across Delhi/NCR region in the coming 3-4 months. These Kiosks are general medical consultations kiosks offering people privacy and comfort. There will be 10 IOT Health Devices interacting with the main hub and developing the primary report of the patient and from there on, if a patient needs a health consult with a doctor then he can do so, by reaching out to the right doctor from our panel of doctors in the same kiosk, said Doctor Insta CEO.

In a bid to reach out to rural population facing shortage of doctors, lacking awareness about telemedicine benefit, we have come up with Doctor Insta Inclusion model. The model is targeted to serve the rural population by offering telemedicine accessibility through MBBS doctors at a lower price point of Rs. 100/consult, he concluded.