Teleconsultation has seen phenomenal rise in adoption during the covid
pandemic – first wave as well as second wave- and as per estimate is expected
to grow to 700 million USD by 2025 from about 100 Million USD in 2020. We have
seen a number of players in the market of telemedicine providing integrated
services of teleconsultation, e-pharmacy and diagnostics- like Practo,
Healthians, Apollo 24/7, Medibuddy, Tata1mg, Pharmeasy etc and also the
eSanjeevani OPD from Government of India.
Among the key drives for adoption of
teleconsultation by consumers, the convenience of availing the consultation
from home instead of travelling and cost saving in teleconsultation compared to
in-person consultation, were perceived as most important benefits.
We also identified the key pain points for
consumers and how teleconsultation will address those. Especially for working
professionals, teleconsultation can address pain points like a lot of time
spent on travelling to clinics, take leave to adjust to the clinic timings,
hassle of carryings lot of papers for patient history, not getting enough time
with clinicians in clinic, high consultancy fee etc.
Brand perception and doctor coverage are
important key purchase criteria that determine which platforms are used by the
customers for teleconsultation.
Authored by (at the time of writing):
Arindam Gupta, Executive Vice President - PGA Labs