Health Care goes mobile with Reliance and Healthcare Magic tie-up

Is there a business in which Reliance is not in? I can’t think of any. Oh wait! There is aviation business which Reliance did not venture into. Last I heard, aviation is not making money and Naresh Goyal is busy firing people and looking for tax sops and Mallya is busy buying teams. May be that is the reason why Reliance (Anil Ambani to be specific) did not go into aviation. Now, Reliance has tied up with Bangalore based HealthCare Magic to provide tele-medicine and mobile health consultancy.

“There are some businesses which doesn’t make money. For everything else there is Reliance”

HealthCare Magic which is a online medical consultancy will allocate 30 doctors for Reliance’s tele-medicine initiative. Based on the demand, this number could be increased to100. Patients have to subscribe to a exclusive Reliance phone number to avail this service. The doctor who attends the patient on phone will listen to the symptoms and advise on the treatment or emergency medicines over the phone. All of this will happen in real time. Reliance will provide the network and infrastructure for Healthcare Magic.

The service is called “Doc on Call” service. This will be a paid service.The fee details for the services are not yet known. Healthcare Magic which services their clients through web, has 30 doctors and services about 3500 enquires each day. Online services are charged at 40/- per day or at an annual subscription of 600/-

Compare this service with what your regular doctors charge. They charge anywhere between 300 to 500 rupees for less than 10 minute consultation. You have to wait for at least an hour to get into the doctor’s room. One hour is if you have an appointment. Don’t we all need a little break from this medical mess. Healthcare Magic might just be that.

For common problems which are not emergency, tele-medicine can be very useful. For emergency the use of this service can be a little tricky. May be patients can use this until the ambulance arrives. Based on the diagnosis, the doctor should send an SMS for the medicines to avoid any communication gap. This is really useful in case of those midnight emergencies where you don’t know what to do. You are not sure if your regular doctor picks up the phone. You can just call the number and be assured that some one picks up and helps you right away.

The success of this services relies on three factors. Adoption, network coverage and signal strength, doctor available on the call. Any service in India suffers with poor customer care. Reliance is no different. I just hope that customer care for this services is taken care. After all it is not customer care, it is patient care.

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Author: Sriram Vadlamani

Sriram Vadlamni is a IT professional and an avid blogger. He blogs about India business at Indianomics.com and you can follow him on twitter @indianomics (Email: sriram.vadlamani@gmail.com)

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Tagged as: ADAG, ambulance, appointment, aviation business, diagnosis, doctors, emergency medicine, healthcare, healthcare magic, medical consultancy, medicine initiative, minute consultation, mobile health, reliance, REliance communication, reliance phone, rupees, tax sops, tele-medicine