How a Major Hospital Deployed a Telehealth Model In the Peak of the Pandemic

We chatted with Shrenik Mehta, AVP, Media and Digital Initiatives at Kokilaben Dhirubhai Ambani Hospital (KDAH), to see how they successfully deployed a Telehealth model in the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Karen Kelty • Aug 27, 2021

About Kokilaben Hospital

Kokilaben Dhirubhai Ambani Hospital & Medical Research Institute (KDAH) is India’s one of the most advanced tertiary care facilities.

Kokilaben Dhirubhai Ambani Hospital

Fast Facts for Kokilaben Dhirubhai Ambani Hospital

The Need

Prior to March 2020, the 400+ doctors who work at Kokilaben Hospital in Mumbai were seeing 30k-40k patients per month for in-person consultations. When the Covid-19 pandemic happened, that number went down drastically, due to the nationwide lockdown. The KDAH IT team who manage the hospital’s technology solutions needed to figure out how to connect with their patients virtually.

The Challenge

The team immediately moved consultations over to Skype at first, but the process was very impersonal and cumbersome, and Skype lacked critical security features necessary to protect both doctors’ and patients’ personal information.

The most important factors they considered when evaluating various solutions were...

  • Advanced security features that allow all data and documents to be stored on their own platform vs. a third-party’s

  • Medical compliances that allow the hospital to safely store and protect patient conversations

  • The ability to keep doctors’ personal information private

The Solution

After demoing various solutions, the Kokilaben IT team quickly landed on CometChat, largely because of the level of dedicated support the CometChat engineering team offered to help develop customized solutions for some of their unique needs.

kokilaben quote

The Launch

Kokilaben Dhirubhai Ambani Hospital's official mobile app

Online consultation with appointment number and UHID boxes

In January 2021, the team successfully launched their newly designed mobile app, which makes it easy for patients to make appointments, track medications, ask their doctor questions, and alert loved ones in case of a medical emergency.

They’re also working with the CometChat development team to get innovative new features built, like the ability for patients to conference in family members who live abroad, and picture-in-picture functionality so doctors can display reports on screen and walk their patients through them.

The Results

More doctors are pushing for virtual consultations, because it makes them more nimble, allowing them to see more patients during non-traditional office hours, so overall productivity has increased.

And patients have been receptive to the new technology too. It’s not uncommon for doctors to run late for in-person appointments. If it happens virtually, it’s not a big deal, and auto-call features enable patients to be updated if a doctor is running late.

Mehta says that even though the end of the pandemic, telehealth is here to stay, and is something both doctors and patients are largely preferring now. 

CHAT WITH US! ‍

Connect with the CometChat team today to see how we can help get in-app messaging, voice & video calling quickly implemented on your website or app.

Karen Kelty

CometChat

Karen Kelty is the Director of Content Marketing at CometChat.

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