REMOTE PATIENT MONITORING: ADDRESSING INDIA'S HEALTHCARE ACCESSIBILITY CHALLENGE

Bridging India's urban-rural gap in healthcare, remote patient monitoring is being aggressively adopted by hospitals in India. Examine the trends in this technology-led practice.

India's healthcare accessibility challenge is a multifaceted issue that has persisted for decades, affecting crores of people, especially the rural Indians. About 70 percent of India's population resides in rural areas but these regions account for only 37 percent of the country's healthcare infrastructure.

One of the primary challenges in rural healthcare is the severe shortage of medical professionals. According to recent data, about 74 percent of doctors in India are stationed in urban areas, serving only 28 percent of the population. Lack of healthcare infrastructure in villages is another major issue. Many rural public healthcare centers are understaffed, poorly equipped, and often run out of essential medicines. This scenario compels India’s rural patients to travel long distances to access basic healthcare services, which proves time-consuming as well as costly.

Given these challenges, remote patient monitoring (RPM) has emerged as an effective technology to bridge the urbanrural divide in healthcare. Providing a historical perspective on RPM’s adoption, Joy Chakraborty, Chief Operating Officer, PD Hinduja Hospital and Medical Research Centre, says, “The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the adoption of technologies like remote patient monitoring. RPM helps reach out to a large rural population despite the limited healthcare resources” that India suffers from today.

From technology practice perspective, RPM is also known by various other names including remote patient diagnosis and monitoring (RPDM), remote patient consultations and monitoring (RPCM), telemedicine, and telehealth, to mention a few.

Recognizing the relevance of RPM, the Indian government too launched the National Digital Health Mission, back in 2020 to create a digital health ecosystem aimed at improving healthcare delivery. This initiative has paved the way for widespread adoption of RPM, enabling patients to access medical care from the comfort of their homes.