The Union Minister for Information Technology and Telecom, Ravi Shankar Prasad, has launched SEHAT – an unique initiative for healthcare in India. The main objective of SEHAT is to provide healthcare facilities in rural areas. As part of the inititive, people in rural areas can consult doctors online and also order generic drugs.
The Common Service Centres (CSCs) have been delivering tele-consultation services with support from Apollo and Medanta. With this initiative the tele-consultation services are being extended to 60,000 CSCs across the country. The CSCs will also provide diagnostic services and promote sale of generic drugs through collaboration with Ministry of Health, by setting up Jan Aasudhi Stores.
Under the service, people can visit CSCs and fix an appointment for seeking expert consultancy with a doctor. The doctors at Apollo Hospitals will be able to provide consultancy to the patients using the video link facilities.
One of the focus areas of digital India program is to promote digital literacy. CSCs across the county can play a critical role in taking Digital literacy to all the corners of the country. Already more than two lakh persons havebeen trained and certified as digitally literate across the country.
Test Your Knowledge
What is Telemedicine?
- Telemedicine is the use of telecommunication and information technologies in order to provide clinical health care at a distance.
- It helps eliminate distance barriers and can improve access to medical services that would often not be consistently available in distant rural communities.
