The utility of telemedicine in general surgery during covid-19 pandemic and beyond: our experience

Introduction: Coronavirus disease-2019, has severely crippled the public healthcare with diversion of majority of services to manage the pandemic. Various strategies have been adopted by institutions across the world to mitigate the crisis. Telemedicine (TM) has emerged as an important means of tackling this pandemic.
Methods: We did a prospective observational study to evaluate the feasibility and assess the utility of TM services in a subset of Indian population at a tertiary care centre in Uttarakhand (Northern India)
Results: we analysed the demographical parameters of a total of 185 patients who has utilized telemedicine services. We found that there is considerable variability in the gender of patients using the service, type of their presentation, category, outcomes and mode of consultation.
Conclusion: Although TM services have been operating in India for more than two decades, its usage has been largely limited to specific sections of the community and has not grown to meet many of India's unique public health challenges. We conclude that effective and satisfactory surgical outpatient services can be provided by means of telemedicine