NEW DELHI: The State of Andhra Pradesh tops the list of 10 states in the use of the Union Health Ministry's National Telemedicine Service – eSanjeevani.

As per an official statement released on Tuesday, the service has conducted more than 1 crore tele-consultations across India and AP is first on the list.

The top 10 districts with the highest consultations are Chittoor, East Godavari, Guntur, Nellore, West Godavari, Krishna, Prakasam, Anantapur, Kurnool in Andhra Pradesh, and Salem in Tamil Nadu.

eSanjeevani has been used by the public in 701 districts across India and over 56 percent of the patients on eSanjeevani are females. Of the 1 crore patients served by eSanjeevani, around 0.5 percent are 80 years and older, and around 18 percent are 20 years or younger,” the ministry said in the statement.

The top 10 states which have registered highest consultations through eSanjeevani and eSanjeevani OPD platforms are Andhra Pradesh (27,51,271), Karnataka (19,39,444), Tamil Nadu (14,76,227), Uttar Pradesh (12,32,627), Gujarat (4,16,221), Madhya Pradesh (3,69,175), Bihar (3,43,811), Maharashtra (3,31,737), Kerala (2,37,973) and Uttarakhand (2,26,436), the statement mentioned.

The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare had in 2018 conceptualised the use of telemedicine to aid the implementation of Ayushman Bharat health insurance scheme. Accordingly, eSanjeevani developed by the Mohali branch of the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) was customised and eSanjeevaniAB-HWC was rolled out in 2019 as a doctor-to-doctor telemedicine platform.

On April 13, 2020, eSanjeevaniOPD was launched to facilitate the provision of health services for patients in the confines of their homes.

The eSanjeevaniOPD -- the second variant of the health ministry's mammoth telemedicine initiative -- was initially rolled out as a minimalistic platform with one general OPD per state.

Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Himachal Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand were the early adopters of this first-of-its-kind of telemedicine initiative. The National Telemedicine Service is relatively more popular in tier II and tier III cities.