Bangalore: ehealth Access, a company focused on developing healthcare eco-system through advanced telemedicine technology, launched a first-of-its-kind Virtual Medical Kiosk. This is a breakthrough innovation in technology that will enable patient-doctor consultation in a secure environment.

Patients and doctors can communicate through phone, web cams, video conferencing, messaging or chat. The Virtual Medical Kiosk is embedded with a touch screen system, audio-video capabilities, diagnostic equipment, scanner and medical management software capable of recording personal health data to give a real-life experience through a proprietary platform developed by ehealth Access.

It facilitates on-demand real-time consultations with medical professionals at any given time of the day. ehealth feels that Bangalore, with its large tech-savvy population, is strongly poised to adopt to this new technology and has thus launched its product in the city.

"Access to a primary healthcare system in India is perceived a challenge. It is this anomaly that we want to change. The Virtual Medical Kiosk devised by ehealth Access aims to change this perception forever," said Mr Jayadeep Reddy, CEO and founder, ehealth Access. "I am very excited to present the first-of-its-kind Virtual Medical Kiosk system. This is a dream that has come true with a lot of hard work. I would like to appreciate and congratulate my team for showcasing how well we can use technology to deliver healthcare," he added.

Commenting on the launch, Mr Ramprabhu T K, co-founder and technology director, ehealth Access, said that, "There is limited access to doctors in major portions of semi-urban and rural India. The medical kiosk will act as a bridge to bring the medical practitioner closer to the people in need for medical consultation. Using technology as an enabler and accelerator we are leveraging the massive penetration of mobile and internet usage with technology innovations in connected devices and help doctors reach out to more patients. This will be the corner stone for making India healthy by 2020."

With the launch of this unique product, ehealth is looking at penetrating and serving a wider population. The way healthcare is delivered is a lot dependent on the physical access and availability of the medical practitioner. It's based on face-to-face interaction between the doctors and the patient. But with this device the patients can consult a wide array of doctors at the touch of a button from wherever they are, whenever they want.

The device could be deployed in a variety of places, including a corporate environment for employee use, at a retail store, at old age homes, or even in a gated community. The Virtual Medical Kiosk also aims to reach out as a channel to help the government towards the implementation of the Universal Health Care programme (UHC) with the help of NGOs in remote places. The Virtual Medical Kiosk serves as the second phase in ehealth's efforts to help patients connect seamlessly to doctors following the launch of its service www.dialurdoctor.com.