Healthcare major Apollo Hospitals is planning to open 1,000 telemedicine centres in the next three years (1,000 days).
K Ganapathy, president Apollo Telemedicine Networking Foundation and president of Telemedicine Society of India, said, “The centres will mostly come up in India and abroad. The investment has not been finalised and we are working on the details.”
Telemedicine is a process through which patients can consult doctors located at very distant places through electronic mediums without visiting them. Apollo currently has 103 telemedicine centres, of which nine are based abroad.
With the 3G in rollout in the country, the telemedicine segment is expected to see a huge growth in 2-3 years along with electronic medical record, mobile health and the overall e-health market, he said.
Around 700 million people in India have access to mobile phones. “The tele-consultations market will roughly be 50-75 million. It’s a huge market and we have tapped only some .001 per cent of the total potential,” Ganapathy said.
Around 800,000 tele-consultations have been done so far from the existing 650 telemedicine centres and 30-35 telemedicine wheels, where tele-consultations are provided through V-Sat, in the country. Apollo itself has done 69,000 such consultations.
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Apollo, which recently launched tele ambulances services, is also planning to launch a pilot project on telemedicine through mobile phones.
“The software and the content have already been obtained and we will start 3G consultations in three weeks. Some laboratory tests, clinical tests and validation process are going on. In a few months, we will start the project,” he added.