Telehealth Transforms India

May 10, 2016 by InTouch Health

Nipun Goyal is the co-founder of Curofy, which makes an app that connects more than 50,000 doctors across 300 cities in India. The Times of India recently hailed Curofy as “one of the 5 best Android apps for doctors.”

Goyal recently gave a shout-out to the InTouch Vita, citing it as a famous example of telehealth technology in action. Telehealth is already playing a key role in Indian healthcare, like in the aftermath of the 2014 Kashmir floods that interrupted medical services to more than 2,000 villages.

Here are Goyal’s thoughts on the five ways that new health technologies are improving patients’ lives across India:

• Building online health repositories that are easily accessible. Goyal sees this as essential to reducing the information gap between India’s urban and rural providers.
• Robot-assisted remote care. He sees this as particularly important for patient monitoring before, during and after medical procedures.
• Health & fitness apps and wearables. Goyal feels that we’re in the early stages of this revolution. There are now apps that accurately assess hydration levels and calorie intake – with much more innovation on the way.
• Greater real-time collaboration between physicians. In Goyal’s view, it’s getting much simpler for physicians to get second opinions and specialty expertise, helping improve outcomes and save lives.
• Improving physician access and scheduling – Like in the U.S., patients in India can now go online to search for a doctor and schedule an appointment just as easily as they can arrange a cab ride or schedule a haircut.

Goyal’s comments show that Moore’s Law is true the world over: computing power is doubling every two years, allowing telehealth technology to do increasingly amazing things – from Bangalore to Boston.