Remote Clinics bring hospital’s satellite or nodal centres, corporate clinic outposts, diagnostic health centres on mfine platform, enables virtual consultations with speciality doctors via audio and video chat
mfine, an AI powered, on-demand healthcare service which enables virtual medical consultations, recently announced the launch of Remote Clinics. Remote Clinics bring the hospital’s satellite or nodal centres, corporate clinic outposts and diagnostic health centres on the mfine platform and enables virtual consultations with speciality doctors via audio and video chat. mfine rolled out the first set of remote clinics in partnership with RxDx Bengaluru and Fortis Mumbai. The company plans to scale this model across India by partnering with similar speciality hospitals having primary health centres and aims to add 100 more clinics on its network in the next six months.
Access to health care services is particularly challenging in many districts in India outside of cities. Moreover, rural communities depend on a system of small clinics and health centres to provide primary care services, often utilising non-physician health professionals. Remote clinics help hospitals expand services in rural areas by connecting patients to specialists. These clinics equipped with new technology can move beyond traditional functions and provide a broader range of services. The remote clinics enable better monitoring of a patient’s progress and also helps them with regular follow-up with the same speciality doctor very conveniently on mfine app or in the clinic. The combination of a remote clinic and mfine app will be especially helpful for the elderly, bedridden and differently-abled patients. Chronic patients who need to consult with speciality doctors on a regular basis will also be able to continue their treatment using the mfine app.
A recent study carried out in rural India found that the majority (76.2 per cent) of the subjects were aware of primary health clinics (PHCs) in their area but utilisation of its services was found to be 36.3 per cent. This was attributed to lower socio-economic background, lower literacy rates and lack of awareness. The figure is lower for patients who consulted with speciality doctors since most of these doctors are only available in the cities. India currently has 8000 private hospitals with 20,000 rural clinics. Government and private establishments are already over-burdened by the patient volume, which makes a remote consulting a win-win strategy for patients and doctors alike.
mfine has started the first phase of deployment with RxDx Hospitals Bengaluru, a multi – speciality chain of hospitals consisting of eight primary healthcare clinics and 15 corporate clinics. Apart from the remote clinics, mfine will also support the doctors working at RxDx Aarogyasri centres, nodal and corporate clinics across all branches. mfine is also on boarding Fortis Mumbai with four primary healthcare centres.