Healthcare From A Distance

SeekMed is a global telemedicine platform that allows patients from anywhere in the world to seek professional and ethical medical advice from India’s award-winning and eminent doctors via video consultation. Alok Awasthi, Founder, SeekMed, discusses his work with us

- Pradeep Chakraborty

What is the foreseeable impact of the prime minister’s newly-announced national Health mission on the Indian digital healthcare sector?

This was a much-needed action from the government to optimise the healthcare industry of the nation that serves over 1.3 billion people. Having an individual health ID for every citizen would help in increasing accessibility of healthcare facilities, and ensure deeper penetration of services to the lowest levels of the social pyramid.

During the Covid-19 crisis, the masses have realised the need for digitisation in healthcare. This is an important step that will open doors for numerous technological integrations in the future. The pilot project that is being run in 6 union territories would help get a clearer picture of the way ahead, but from the looks of it, the mission seems beneficial for the people specifically the ones from remote areas who currently have limited access to quality care.

NDHM is going to unlock avenues for smarter healthcare delivery, biomedical research and data driven decision-making in India. In many ways, this will set a global benchmark as no other nation would have such a huge medical database covering a significant portion of the population. This would be instrumental in the implementation of better healthcare management policies, and would also make healthcare awareness programs more effective by minimising the gap among various stakeholders in the Indian healthcare system, such as patient community, doctors, pharmacies, hospitals and health insurance providers.