Impact of TeleHealth Services through “Shastho Batayon 16263” for Tackling the COVID-19 pandemic in Bangladesh

Background: The National Telehealth Service,“Shastho Batayon 16263” was launched on April 2016. The aim was to provide cost effective and less time-consuming health care delivery service over one call, by certified health professionals and efficient counsellors 24/7. It has been financed by MoHFW through Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS) and implemented by Synesis IT. To use the service of Shastho Batayon, dialing 16263 from any phone to reach healthcare professionals and health information officers who can give evaluations, treatment and counseling, referral services, emergency ambulance services, and complaint management based on the needs of the customer. Since the outbreak began, Shastho Batayon played significant role regarding delivering health services more than 10 million citizens of Bangladesh by managing of patients with COVID-19 or other diseases in 2020. Methodology: Shastho Batayon 16263 operates on three 8 hourly shifts everyday where 15 doctors and 8 HIOs are engaged per shift initially. During the pandemic situation, calls jumped up to 85,000 per day. Therefore, overall, 150 doctors and 30 HIOs served to tackle the pandemic crisis. Implementation of the telehealth consultation has been conducted according to Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) developed and approved for Shastho Batayon by DGHS through a 24/7 service package. Data was collected by integrated Customer Relationship Management (CRM). While serving the customer, Doctors and HIOs input the required data in the CRM which is analyzed by the integrated software developed by Synesis IT. The CRM also consists patients’ earlier information and his history, previous medication and it can generate prescription through mobile phone.Result: In the first 6 months of 2021, Shastho Batayon successfully managed to serve 1.58 million callers. However, the majority of calls (average 80%) from March to June 2021 were related to COVID-19. Among all the calls from January 2021 to June 2021, 952,646 calls made for doctor’s consultancy (highest in April), 70,413 calls for health information, 104,341 calls for ambulance information, 73,119 complaints were registered and 383,517 people called to know about the service. Shastho Batayon received most of the calls from Dhaka (38%), followed by Chittagong (15%), Barisal (13%) and Khulna (10%) division. Least number of callers were from Mymensing (5%) and Sylhet (3%) division. The proportion of calls received from males were 69% while the rest of the calls were done for females and age distribution was mostly from 21 to 30 years old. Most of the patients called with symptoms of flu like symptoms such as, fever, cough, runny nose, sore throat, weakness and so on. The source of knowing about Shastho Batayonwas mostly from Friends & Family. These repeat callers increased drastically up to 41%. Conclusions: During pandemic where face-to-face health assistance is not possible there Shastho Batayon call center platform could serve as a model for underdeveloped countries. TelemHealth is able to provide low-cost, trustworthy health services while maintaining privacy, earning individuals’ appreciation and contributing to the government’s current health system.