This group of IT professionals is connecting home quarantined COVID-19 patients with doctors

Amid the deadly second COVID-19 wave, innovations to support the health infrastructure is the need of the hour. A group of IT professionals has now launched a consultation portal called MedicSetu.org to help COVID-19 patients are under self-isolation or suspecting patients to connect with doctors for regular consultations. 

MIT Boston alumnus Kunaal Prasad, who worked on the development of the Aarogya Setu app, Anish Kumar, Managing Director and Co-founder of I-Novate Group of Companies, Paritosh Gandhi, Director at Avaya India, Shailendra Jain, Founder of My Senior Doctors along with other launched this initiative on May 10th. 

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“This platform is like a virtual OPD where any patient can log in by sharing only the name and phone number and wait for their turn to be consulted by a doctor. Doctors who are registered after due verification by the supporting NGOs can take these patients one by one and interact with them through video conferences,” the MedicSetu team said in a statement.

Speaking with YourStory, Kunaal, Project Lead at MedicSetu, explained that the team came together after realising the increasing pressure on the health infrastructure with the increasing number of cases.

“I got on calls with my colleagues and friends and we just decided to get into designing something which will give a platform to people looking to help solve the situation. We were probably talking about this on May 3rd and within seven days we launched the platform,” he says.

The HIPAA compliant platform also ensures data protection as it gets deleted instantly and is not stored by the platform. 

“Prescription and data is shared with the patient and the concerned doctor for the record but none of it is stored on the platform,” he adds.

The team clarifies that the initiative is a non-profit, non-commercial project, and thus the consultation services are free of charge. The services will be however available only from 9 am to 9 pm.

MedicSetu is working with Rotary Club - Bihar and Jharkhand chapter, and Arogya Foundation of India to onboard doctors on their platform. Apart from this, Avaya India is offering their video conferencing system Avaya Spaces free of cost for a month in order to support the initiative.

MedicSetu has 139 registered doctors who have served 387 patients within two days of launch. Kunal explained that while currently most of the doctors have been onboarded from Bihar and Jharkhand, the platform is serving patients from across the country.

The MedicSetu team is looking for more organisations to join with them for this initiative and also help with enlisting more doctors in order to attend to the needs of the patients. 

Speaking about the plans ahead, Kunal said, “MedicSetu.org will continue the free services for now amid the pandemic situation. Post pandemic, we are planning to continue this solution mainly for the underprivileged sections of society. As of now, the services are totally non-profit but we are yet to decide on commercialisation model later on.”