Hyderabad startup forays into telemedicine

Hyderabad: Outpatient services are temporarily suspended at all hospitals following imposition of lockdown due to outbreak of Coronavirus. This has led to numerous hardships for the patients struggling to seek medical advice and treatment.

The fledgling telemedicine, which facilitates remote health services such as monitoring, advice and education between doctors and patients online over a secure connection, is getting much boost these days.

It has potential to bring state-of-the-art healthcare within reach of the needy in certain cases. Entering the bandwagon is a city online pharmacy and e-health startup, Metro Medi, which has launched a telemedicine service app in Telugu.

Maruthi Medisetti, co-founder and CEO of Metro Medi, said, "Due to the outbreak of Coronavirus, doctors are not available to treat normal patients, as the outpatient service is temporally closed and also due to the fear of contracting the virus, many patients are avoiding visiting hospitals.

Keeping these issues in mind, especially in tier-3 and tier-4 towns that do not have proper access to specialist doctors, the app is launched on April 25. It would be helpful post lockdown also."

The startup has tied up with more than 40 doctors from fields like ENT, general medicine, pediatrics, orthopedic, gynecology, ophthalmology, and psychiatry. The app is available on Google Playstore. Kannada version is in the offing.

The startup which began operations in 2018. They have opened pharmacy stores and also deliver medicines to customers, added Maruthi.

The startup plans to connect this app with pharmacies, doctors and patients – so that healthcare becomes an easy process, right from consultation to delivery of medicines.

Pharmacies would function as a nodal point for both doctors and patients and a team will monitor it for smooth functioning.

Whenever the doctor prescribes medicine through this app, pharmacist would receive the prescription through this app and it would be easy to deliver medicines to the patients.