Apollo 24|7
Apollo Hospitals is the biggest multispecialty healthcare provider in India with a capacity of over 12,000 beds across 72 hospitals. Apollo has 4,500+ pharmacy outlets, over 120 primary care clinics and 700+ diagnostic clinics.
Apollo Hospitals is the biggest multispecialty healthcare provider in India with a capacity of over 12,000 beds across 72 hospitals. Apollo has 4,500+ pharmacy outlets, over 120 primary care clinics and 700+ diagnostic clinics.
Challenge
Apollo’s rate of growth warranted modernization of patient engagement and Apollo wanted to create digital systems backing its operations, resulting in an integrated platform for management of doctor availability and consults. Apollo wanted to provide patients a connected journey through their care lifecycle – from consultations to diagnostics to purchasing medication. Patients should be able to search, select, and consult with doctors based on their need and the doctor’s clinical specialization. The platform needed to scale and cater to 500,000-1,000,000 users to book appointments, order tests and purchase medication. The platform would account for doctors’ schedules (ranging from full-time to visiting to being on a consultant basis), and customized consultation times (time set for each appointment is left to the discretion of the doctor). With existing systems, a lot of these functions took significant manual effort.
Solution
Through Apollo 24×7, we enabled a connected patient journey – providing an easy and natural progression from booking appointments to conducting online video consultation to ordering medicines to booking diagnostics tests. We integrated the client’s multiple offerings and provided a digital payment gateway to manage bookings and appointments effectively, with minimal disruption.
The appointment booking system is set up to maximize productivity and make the best use of doctors’ and patients’ time. It adjusts for special circumstances such as a doctor or patient no-show and allows physicians to set both their own consult hours and length of appointment. Through mobile or web interfaces, Doctors can initiate video consultations with patients, review their medical history, and send prescriptions. The Apollo 24×7 mobile and web applications are backed by a comprehensive and consolidated system that integrates Apollo’s existing database of patient health records, Prism, and communicates with external systems to manage requests. With a consolidated view of patient health records, including patient-doctor interactions, medical history, and so on, Apollo can provide the best possible care for each patient.
Benefits
- Connected patient journey – Apollo 24x7 creates a single touchpoint for all patient needs, from virtual consultations to diagnostics to ordering medication.
- Comprehensive view of the patient – With access to thorough patient health records, doctors are empowered with full information to provide quality care and accurate diagnoses.
- Effective appointment management system – Appointment management is automated for the maximum benefit of doctors and patients.
- Enhanced productivity – Apollo 24x7 gathers as much information as possible about the patient before the appointment through a set of predetermined questions in the virtual ‘consult room’. Junior doctors then ask an additional set of standard questions and make a preliminary assessment for a case sheet that is submitted to a senior doctor. Junior doctors can also recommend a different specialist than the one selected by the patient if necessary, ensuring the right care.
- Online validation of prescription – The patient can upload a photo of the prescription to the Apollo 24x7 app to order medication. The prescription is then validated by a pharmacist, so the patient can order medication from an Apollo Pharmacy with a prescription from any licensed doctor, not just one from Apollo.
As of October 2022, the Apollo 24/7 app has been downloaded by ~15 Million users on the Android and iOS platforms. Currently, Apollo conducts ~7000 tele consults a day leading to thousands of pharmacy and diagnostics orders.
