Telemedicine in India - an investment of technology for a digitized healthcare industry: a systematic review

Connecting rural India to modernised healthcare facilities through telemedicine has been a long-time vision of the Government of India. Telemedicine provides continuity of care to patients keeping the doctor-patient interaction alive. This study aims to explore telemedicine and its ever-growing trend. The journey of its evolution from a doubtful start to its current position is examined in this study. A systematic electronic search for articles available between 2014 to 2020 using MEDLINE, EMBASE, Cochrane Database and Google Scholar was performed using PRISMA guidelines. Studies published in English, with free full-text availability and "telemedicine" and "India" used as keywords were included. 126 studies were identified and, after a further analysis, 21 of 44 articles were chosen for assessment. The healthcare industry is largely benefitting from telemedicine. Different fields of medicine have provided successful evaluations and remedies by utilising telemedicine. We found that systematic availability and functioning of ICT, technical infrastructure, data storage systems, standardization of health protocols are few of the challenges faced. COVID 19 has forced the resilience of patients and professional Indians to overcome the barriers and explore telemedicine to achieve quality patient-centric and value-based healthcare. Digitization displays tremendous potential to facilitate a booming practise in telemedicine with suitable training and stringent guidelines.