{"id":83373,"date":"2021-02-18T11:15:21","date_gmt":"2021-02-18T05:45:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.forumias.com\/?p=83373"},"modified":"2021-02-18T11:59:43","modified_gmt":"2021-02-18T06:29:43","slug":"significance-of-telehealth-services-like-remote-smas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/significance-of-telehealth-services-like-remote-smas\/","title":{"rendered":"Significance of Telehealth services like Remote SMAs"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><b>Synopsis<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">: The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted Normal health Services in India. The telehealth services like <b>Remote Shared Medical Appointments (SMAs)<\/b> should be used.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Background<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The March 2020 lockdown reassigned healthcare professionals towards COVID-19 specific duties.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This deviated the focus from other healthcare domains in India and across the world.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>How Covid-19 disrupted normal Health care services<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">As per a survey of WHO,\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Essential services like immunization and childcare got disrupted in the majority of the 105 countries surveyed.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Around 45% of low-income countries witnessed a disruption in 75% of services. While this figure for high-income countries was only 4%.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Impacts on India<\/strong>:\u00a0<\/span>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Fear of transmission and lockdown resulted in the fall of diagnostic services. In tuberculosis detection cases 50% fall was reported from April-December 2020. Whereas, in antenatal care visits \u00a056% decline was observed during the first half of 2020.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The inequalities got widened when people in rural and remote areas were not able to travel to cities for getting specialized care. <\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">However, the use of technology helped to mitigate the impact.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>Virtual Consultation India\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n<ol>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The <\/span><b>E-Sanjeevani platform of the Indian Government <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">provides virtual consultations to patients. It includes patient-to-provider and provider-to-provider consultation. <\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>A hub and spoke model<\/strong> used for this platform. It connected smartphone-equipped rural wellness centres to specialist doctors located in cities.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Private players and non-governmental organizations also used the technology for reaching out to patients.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">However, given the scale of India\u2019s population which is devoid of healthcare, a switch towards remote shared medical appointments is needed.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>About Remote Shared Medical Appointments<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><b>Remote Shared Medical Appointments<\/b>\u00a0virtualizes the process of in-person shared medical appointments (SMAs). It is an effective practice in the US for more than 2 decades.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Thus, It involves the <\/span><b>virtual interaction of a doctor <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">with <\/span><b>multiple patients<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> having similar issues.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><b>Advantages:<\/b>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400; text-align: left;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Patients get more time with doctors.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400; text-align: left;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This process develops a sense of bonding among patients.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400; text-align: left;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This process provides better productivity as patients learn from each other&#8217;s questions.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>Utility for India<\/b>:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">SMAs have been very effective in the case of diabetes. It is notable that India is home to the largest number of diabetes patients.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Aravind hospital in Puducherry has<\/span><b> shown the potential of SMAs<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> to combat glaucoma, a disease that causes gradual blindness.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Offering this facility through the E-Sanjeevani platform can help the country <\/span><b>meet the healthcare gap in rural India.<\/b><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">SMAs will encourage people interaction and attract supplementary providers like physiotherapists and optometrists.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The <\/span><b>current COVID-19 vaccine drive<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> will also be strengthened as providers can offer sessions to burst the myths related to vaccine efficacy.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p><b>Way Forward<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">:<\/span><\/p>\n<ol>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The switch to a new technique of healthcare delivery will require adequate training and mentoring of both providers and patients.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><b>Collaboration with training platforms like ECHO<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> is desired to encourage the adoption of virtual SMAs. It trains primary healthcare providers in multiple states.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">India is blessed to have<\/span><b> very low data rates<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> where 1.5 GB data\/day is easily affordable for many Indians. This automatically gives the country a significant edge towards augmenting telehealthcare.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Further, the strengthening of digital health services will also be in line with <\/span><b>WHO\u2019s Global strategy <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">on Digital health. It would help in realizing the dream of \u2018<\/span><b>Health for All\u201d.<\/b><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Synopsis: The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted Normal health Services in India. The telehealth services like Remote Shared Medical Appointments (SMAs) should be used. Background: The March 2020 lockdown reassigned healthcare professionals towards COVID-19 specific duties. This deviated the focus from other healthcare domains in India and across the world.\u00a0 How Covid-19 disrupted normal Health care services:&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/significance-of-telehealth-services-like-remote-smas\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Significance of Telehealth services like Remote SMAs<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":61,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1230,9],"tags":[1289],"class_list":["post-83373","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-9-pm-daily-articles","category-public","tag-soc_0","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","views":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83373","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/61"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=83373"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83373\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=83373"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=83373"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=83373"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}