Latest Trends in Online Healthcare !!

Latest Trends in Online Healthcare !!

According to the latest issue of “Outlook Business” magazine, the healthcare services in India’s private hospitals is getting world class. However, the customer service at the same private hospitals is not able to catch up with the rapid developments in the infrastructure of the hospital. The patients are happy with the patient care but they are still unhappy with the quality of customer care they get. Waiting in the queue, doctor not available on time, payment hassles etc.

A new trend that is coming up in this eco-system of traditional healthcare delivery through Hospitals / Clinics is “Online Healthcare”. The doctors and hospitals can look at this as a channel that filters the patients and then forwards them to the doctors and hospitals for treatment.

Online Healthcare includes a few important aspects as mentioned below. At the core of the system is a central web-site or portal.

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  It provides an access to doctor online for Live Chat. The patients can use the Internet and chat with the doctor. The doctors can provide medical advice to handle the current situation and then refer the patient to the nearest hospital and doctor in their locality. Doctors also provide answers for the common medical queries.
  
  



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  It provides patient generated reviews about the hospitals and doctors and also the contact details of the doctors and hospitals.
  
  



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  It provides a Forum where people of similar health problems can discuss with each other.
  
  



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  The website also provides content in the form of answers to common queries, which the patients might have.
  
  



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  The website has common health tools and price listings for the common medical procedures in hospitals.
  
  



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  Patients can buy medicine over the Internet and it will be delivered to their home.
  
  

Such trend is already popular in the USA and Europe. Many websites like www.webmd.com is widely used worldwide. In India, www.healthcaremagic.com has recently started this service and has already referred hundreds of patients for OPD and IPD procedures in Bangalore.

From a patient’s perspective, he gets to know a lot before rushing to a hospital. Let’s see the trend now. If the patient falls ill, he will ask a couple of friends about their experiences with doctors. The information from these people is limited. It is not in terms of information, but in terms of the quality of information. The information might cover everything about how people felt about the experience, in terms of the doctor’s demeanour, the cleanliness of the place among other things. But the information will be limited in terms of important criteria like qualifications of the doctor, experience of the doctor, affiliations of the doctor among other things. It is understandable in the current scheme of things.However this is the age of information and we need it in adequate amounts to make informed decisions about our health. Without getting into lengthy debates about the healthcare scene, the Online Healthcare service providers are trying to offer more information and assisting people in their quest for informed healthcare decisions.

This seems to be the beginning of Consumer Driven Healthcare Informatics in India. It’s a kind of decision support system where the patients get right advice and recommendations for free. So whatever used to be a “word of mouth referral” is slowly migrating to “click and find” referral. What else can a patient expect - his appointment is fixed with a specialist, he knows the consultation fees, and when he goes to the hospital or clinic, he does not have to wait in a queue and to his surprise, he finds that the doctor was expecting him.

Online Healthcare services open up new channels for young doctors who are preparing for their post-graduate examinations but need to earn while they prepare for examinations. It is also good opportunity for those doctors who do not want to set up their personal clinics. It is also a good avenue for senior retired doctors in medicine and family practice, who bring in decades of experience in providing guidance and suggestions to patients.

Seeing the way healthcare services are moving today and the way people are demanding a good customer service, it seems Online Healthcare is a positive step towards improvement.

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