Three legal tips for practicing telemedicine in India

The Internet is now commonplace in India, and healthcare is set to benefit greatly by using the Internet for our huge and populous country. Telemedicine is one immediate aspect of the web that is set to take off because of the many benefits it provides in the Indian scenario. A lot of deaths in India are because of treatable diseases like TB, diarrhea, and malaria. The doctor to patient ratio at 0.5 per 1000 is way below the desired average of at least 3.0 to 3.5 per thousand. A lot of patients just don’t get to see a doctor. A lot of doctors want to reach out to new populations. Universal health coverage will be doable much faster if we can induce Indian physicians to adopt telemedicine.

However, a lot of such digital medicine initiatives in India are held up by legal fears. Many of us doctors have no idea where the law stands in regards to providing health consultations via the Internet. In order to understand the medico- legal aspects of digital medicine...