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Pharmacists view telemedicine as a platform to extend medication therapy management. With the remote health consultations gaining ground during COVID-19 pandemic, pharmacists have geared to chip in their expertise.
In an effort to spur the concept of remote health consultations, Jiyyo Innovations and Pharamcon Society for Pharmacy Practice is now expanding its foot print to set up 1,00,000 e:clinics roping in pharmacy colleges across the country. The game plan is to set up one clinic in each village and every 2 km in urban areas. The platform integrates digital stethoscope, pulse oxymetre and weighing scale besides can share the audio recording with the specialists for real time diagnosis.
Dr. Karthik Rakam president, Pharmacon Society for Pharmacy Practice and medical advisor, HealthCloudAI said that this is best mode to collect and organize patient-specific information, determine medication-therapy problems, summarize patients’ health needs and design a pharmaco-therapeutic plan.
Pharmacists can take the full patient history through open-ended questioning and active listening. This is because research evidence indicates the importance of the medical history to provide accurate diagnosis, he added. “Our objective as pharmacists is to assess, implement and monitor pharmaco-therapeutic plan. This depends on the drug regimen and pharmacist can monitor for efficacy and safety’, said Dr Rakam who is also the Advisor - Clinical Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Care, Jiyyo core member, Punjab Telemedicine Expert Committee.
Stating that e:clinics offer a promising job opportunities for pharmacists as medical care and pharmacy are the core services during the pandemic, Siddharth Angrish, CEO and co-founder, Jiyyo Innovations said any retail pharmacist can boost his revenues through telemedicine.
The retail pharmacists can enhance technology adoption and enhance their reputation with patients and doctors. Moreover there is a visible healthcare imbalance in rural India. Accounting for the 68% of the country’s population, these areas have 1 doctor serving 19,000 people. Even the WHO recommends 1:1000, he added.
With telemedicine monitored by pharmacists, there is 24/7 access to qualified medical resources for immediate consultation, said Angrish at KRPA hosted webinar on ‘Scope for pharmacists in telemedicine.’
Pharmacists need to look at serving on telemedicine platforms like Jiyyo Mitra e:clinics which has proved to provide support in patient care, early diagnosis , eliminate or reduce symptoms, arrest or slow the disease process and even prevent a disease, noted Dr Rakam.
Currently Jiyyo operates over 150 e:clincs across Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Telangana. Calling on pharmacy colleges to engage qualified candidates to set up the telemedicine platform, Angrish said that there would be three revenue streams. One is the share in e-Consultation Fee of Rs. 50, second is the medicine sale of Rs. 50 and third is from the lab tests that fetch the pharmacist Rs. 50. On an average the earnings would be Rs. 150 per patient. Even 3 patients a day would suffice which would be 90 patients a month enabling revenue generation of Rs. 13,500 per month.
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