Use of a telemedicine registry

Since decades there were huge efforts by various govt. agencies , academia, and industry on not only implement telemedicine but scale it. Though some implementation happened, scaling was rare. Covid have made life very tough for many who seek care, some times made it nearly impossible to visit hospital and get help from the doctor. Those in any acute pain or mild problems suffered, those suffering chronic problems also suffered and got no follow ups, patients needing dialysis or patients who need Hydroxychloroquine suffered due to inaccessibility or shortage, the pregnant moms suffered by missing their important regular checkups, small kids missed their vaccinations and even those who got access to hospitals suffered by not having access to better and some suffered due to stress this pandemic have created in daily life. 

Telemedicine which includes tele-consultation, tele-Icu, etc can not solve all the patient problems but surely it easily and efficiently solves many of them and reduce patient's suffering during this pandemic and empower everyone for better with the new normal. It have capability to help bring relief to a patient having mild acute problem somewhere, to bring access to care in patient in remote rural place, to bring support for follow ups when hospital visit is not necessary, to empower for second opinion from another doctor somewhere, to empower ICUs by support from remote center, and a lot more. Having a Registry where Tele-medicine products are listed after evaluation from an expert panel will help the patients, doctors, hospitals, tele-medicine companies and all stakeholders in the tele-medicine ecosystem by having access to information about various products, their capabilities, their strength and weaknesses. These key information will help decision makers to find products best suited to them and accelerate the adoption which will directly accelerates the empowerment of our healthcare system in country by making impact in solving many patient problems like those listed above and reduce their suffering. It will also help the ecosystem with a direction that helps to innovate and improve for delivering better.

I am not emphasizing in the context of Covid pandemic much because I have first hand experience in being helpful to patients and also engage with doctors offering telemedicine to patients globally (and tele-education which is equally important for our country) for 3 years even before the pandemic began and so i believe in its tremendous capability not just for war against Covid but even beyond the pandemic.

I am currently involved in Tele Med Registry http://telemedregistry.in/ as student member of DHIndia.

I would also like to share a playlist I have made by compiling a few useful videos in youtube, which helps to understand good webside manners and physical examination on the webside which are very important in the care process. If you are interested then can check on this link - http://classworkdecjan.blogspot.com/2020/08/telemedicine-good-webside-manners-and.html

Telemedicine - good webside manners and physical examination

 "The whole art of medicine is in observation" - William Osler

Physical examination is very important in for doctors to get insights from the patients and find correct diagnosis and best treatment plan. Teleconsultation software nearly always have the physical examination as part of the clinical workflow but doing it well may be a challenge for the care providers.

So I made this youtube playlist which may help with tips on doing physical examination and following good webside manners. I hope this will be useful in covid times and later.

link to the playlist -  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hRObfNyDvc&list=PL7NbfQr9rYIeU2GUIKLF4F-4DfpqZATMW

Email to Medical Education Unit (India) email group.

To - meu_india@googlegroups.com

Respected Teachers

Using paper based forms and then digitizing data to analyze is a painful task. Here is a google form I have made with guidance from Prof. Rakesh Biswas (KIMS, Narketpally) which you may copy and use for your students feedback. A Students need to fill form once for each subject. 

Form - https://forms.gle/AbD5feAAbu1241CN6

There are 2 ways this form can be used

1. You can send me a request on avi33tbtt@gmail.com so i can help you get a copy of this form which you may use to get feedback, get basic automated analytics and do advance analytics yourself if needed. Based on your need you can also make modifications to the form.

2. You can help us by sharing the above form link to your students so we get nationwide feedback data where no student identifier is recorded as all data is collected anonymously and we share the analytics openly. It can also be used for research purpose. 

Doing both also possible, all you need is to follow the first way and then share data with your consent (without any student identifiers) to include as data for national level analytics.

Regards,

Avinash Kumar 

Reply to teachers requesting form -

Respected Sir/Madam,

Thanks for your interest in Online Medical Education/Classes Feedback Form.

I am sharing this form with you and giving you owner access. You may then distribute this form to students using this link - https://forms.gle/************

If you wish to add any more questions like roll number, email id of student etc. then please let me know, i will be able to update accordingly. 

knowing roll numbers will help to know about which students haven’t filled the form and hence you can instruct them later to fill if pending, without roll numbers it won’t be possible to identify students pending to give response so you may prefer to add that field, please let me know.

Once you are ready to go ahead for sharing the form, you can remove my access to the form if you need. Please let me know in reply to this email, if you also want to share your student’s feedback data for national level analysis on Online Medical Education/Classes.

Regards,

Avinash Kumar