Patients locked down in their houses can now consult specialist doctors for free on esanjeevaniopd.in, the telemedicine portal of the National Health Mission.

“Specialists from different departments of RIMS, Ranchi, have started offering their services since Saturday on esanjeevaniopd.in,” said Dr L.R. Pathak, nodal officer of the telemedicine project. “We have four to five doctors from each department on our panel, who would be available on roster basis between 2pm and 3pm for tele-consultation.”

The specialists have been allotted separate dates for the convenience of patients, he said.

“We have given different specialists separate dates for convenience of patients during the one-hour period. While general medicine specialists will be available on Monday, orthopaedic and child specialists will be available on Tuesday, surgery specialists will be available on Wednesday, eye and gynaecology specialists on Thursday, ENT (ear, nose and throat) and dentists on Friday and skin specialists on Saturday,” said Pathak.

In view of the large number of migrant workers returning to the state, most of them without work and under mental trauma, the health department also has psychiatrist consultation daily for an hour.

“We have three psychiatrists from the state health department and one from RIMS who will be offering their services on the telemedicine portal depending on the roster throughout the week for one hour between 1pm and 2pm. It is needed because during the lockdown there have been cases of people suffering from depression and with a large number of migrant workers returning after leaving their jobs and earning under mental trauma, such counselling will help them turn a new leaf,” said Pathak.

This would be in addition to the counselling provided by general physicians and a women doctors daily (except Sundays) between 11am and 1pm and between 3pm and 5pm.

Jharkhand became the 12th state to be integrated into the telemedicine facility of the NHM on May 1. People can login to the portal through laptops or smartphones from their home and get medical consultation for free without having to wait in line at hospital outpatient departments.

A patient will have to log in from anywhere by registering on the portal filling up some mandatory fields like phone number (for generation of OTP), name, address and will get a token number. The patient will have to again login entering the phone number and the token number and enter into the waiting room with names of doctors available for consultation and wait for turn (based on token number) to consult the doctor. After the consultation, one will have to download the e-prescription for purchasing medicines.