Doctor, a Click Away - "The Week" calls iCliniq a Gamechanger in making healthcare more accessible
Transcript of the coverage of icliniq.com on “The Week” magazine dated October 26, 2014.
Wish you could see your doctor anytime, anywhere? Dhruv Kumar, 26, has made it possible through his online iCliniq.
With more than 500 doctors covering 70 specialities available for online consultations on issues ranging from common cold and cough to infertility, cancer and mental illness, iCliniq is fast gaining popularity.
To ensure personalised treatment for every visitor, a team attends to you as soon as you log on to the website. This ‘May I help you’ team takes you through a virtual tour of the clinic and helps you connect with the right doctor.
A single question will be answered for Rs.99 while a face-to-face consultation through video chatting costs between Rs.199 and Rs.499.
According to Dhruv, iCliniq works like a virtual hospital where every doctor is appointed after a thorough background check and an interview by a panel of senior doctors. The doctors are then given a small training in online consultation.
“For an effective online consultation, it is important to ask relevant questions. So, we discussed various medical conditions with hundreds of doctors and have designed an online questionnaire which we give to each doctor on the panel,” says Dhruv. “These questions, in most cases, help a doctor in diagnosing a specific medical condition.”
The service, says Dhruv is extremely helpful for frequent travellers, people in remote areas, those seeking a second opinion and for those suffering from chronic conditions and need frequent consultations.
Specialists in internal medicine, dermatology, paediatrics and oncology are the most sought after on the site. Psychiatry is another field, says Dhruv, where a lot of people prefer online consultation to meeting the doctor personally. “The reason could be confidentiality and the anonymity that people seeking psychiatric help look for” he says.
Apart from providing consultation, iCliniq also helps the doctors in expanding their horizon. “Sometimes, I come across a query from a patient which is not familiar to me. I read more to find an answer to the query and in the process update myself,” says Dr Divakara P., a Bengaluru based physician who is on the panel of the online hospital.
“Besides, going through the prescriptions and diagnostic tests of some international patients keeps me abreast of the latest in medicine around the world.”