A Comprehensive Mobile Tele-consultation Solution for Tertiary Hospitals in India

The recent outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in the suspension of outpatient services in various hospitals and healthcare facilities, including tertiary hospitals. This has elicited interest in development of novel, low-cost solutions with a quick turnaround time for tele-consultation that patients can use to consult with doctors using mobile devices. This paper presents the design, development and implementation perspectives for such a tele-consultation system developed for tertiary care hospitals in India. The comprehensive application includes workflows for patients, doctors and healthcare workers on both web and mobile devices. Patients or healthcare workers can raise tele-consultation requests that can be approved by doctors. Consultation through video-calling and Electronic Health Record (EHR) compliant clinical prescriptions can be generated from the solution using clinician's speech. It has been deployed at various tertiary hospitals in India on a pilot basis and the deployment outcomes indicate positive acceptance and adoption of the solution. The paper also focuses on emerging technologies that can be integrated with such solutions, including blockchain based Electronic Health Records (EHR) management and cloud-based deployments that leverage advances in communication networks such as enhanced Mobile Broadband (eMBB) and low-latency provisions in 5G for improving Quality of Service (QoS) and user experience.