NEW DELHI: Doctors offering teleconsultation to patients across India will soon need to pursue a course with the country’s medical education regulator in order to provide the services. A committee set up by the Medical Council of India-Board of Governors in May to develop the outline of the course is set to submit its report to the government.
“We had been asked to prepare the structured course for certification in telemedicine and we will soon hand it over to the MCI-BOG,” said Dr B N Gangadhar, director of the National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro-Sciences in Bengaluru, who headed a six-member steering committee on the subject.
This course, to be offered online, is likely to be a short-term course that will teach medical professionals the nuances of interacting with patients when not consulting them in person.
The medical education regulator had also formed a panel of experts in telemedicine to assist the Gangadhar panel.
As of now, any doctor without any special degree in telemedicine can guide patients over email, phone, app, chat or video.
On March 25, the Centre had hurriedly published guidelines on the practice of telemedicine to guide doctors offer consultation to patients through video, phone and internet based platforms in a standardised manner.
These guidelines, prepared in consultation with Niti Aayog, had been in the making for long but had been notified due to the COVID-19.
The government had been urging people to limit out-patient consultation unless essential and use telemedicine services by doctors instead.
“A telemedicine visit can be conducted without exposing staff to viruses or infections in the times of such outbreaks,” the guidelines said.