How to get online medical consultation/healthcare

Introduction to Online Medical Consultation
Have you ever tried or seen people getting second opinion on small problems like body pains, headache for which normally people use over-thecounter medicines (e.g. Paracetamol, ibuprofen etc). In-case of minor-to-major surgical procedures, I'm sure we would be cautious enough to consult multiple doctors to confirm the need for surgical procedure and to find out alternative ways to avoid surgery (that would be last option people will go for).

 

Just think how it would be if you can get the consultation/second opinion from specialist who sits in different geography and diagnosis your problem and recommends a different view point of your/someone problem which can be solved with a simple medication instead of surgical needs.

For e.g.

 "If someone had seen three doctors in multiple places for the pain and was told he had a clot and needed surgery, Two experts from online consultation website doctor's panel - a cardiologist and an orthopaedic surgeon, neither of whom was based in the same geography - reviewed the patient case online after his test reports, including results of his ECG , stress test, and on the orthopedics's advice, an X-ray of his shoulder, on the website. The experts examines the reports and diagnosis as : a frozen shoulder".

Just think how useful this form of online consultation will be to get the second opinion for the above example?

Online Medical Consultation:
Some of the below sites which offer Medical consultation/provides some medical help:
http://www.mediangels.com/
http://www.healthcaremagic.com/
http://www.webhealthcentre.com/
http://www.webmd.com/
http://wacky5.com/

some sites also allows the user to register and store the medical profile in their sites (Storing the medical profile online is not recommended). Web MD (http://www.webmd.com/) is one website which I am aware of that helps you identify the problem based on your symptoms. Help you to get aware of the medicine such as what it is used for, various foms its available (liquid, tablets, etc), dosage, and side-effects.

How online medical consultation works?
Patient has to submit the query/detailed medical problem. These website will then assign the query to corresponding doctor (general or specialized based on the description of the problem). Doctor may provide the answers if they are simple or may request for more information(

How much it would cost to get online medical consultation/second opinion??
General queries: Rs.250 or $10 based on the doctors geographical presence
Detailed consultation: Rs. 500 or $100 where it would required detailed study of your medical reports
Doctors will also be available to give you second opinion on the medical consultation for which it would cost  Rs.150-500 (approx) based on the problem.

Closing comments: Online medical consultation is at very preliminary stage in India compared to US/UK. Most of the above listed websites have more number of registered users outside India only. With highly specialized doctors with good track record would be of great help through this online consultations, but without physical examination with doctor, the online consultation may not be helpful in some cases. At this stage, I would say we can take the second opinion from this online medical consultation websites and to get some answers to general medical related queries but not for the full fledged healthcare services.

Disclaimer: Online medical consultation is not to substitute for any existing form of healthcare delivery such as physical visits to doctors, examinations or hospitals and the above websites have elaborate disclaimers on this too. 

Important Note: This article does not recommend any specific online medical consultation/healthcare sites. Main purpose of this article is to give insight on the online medical consultation as an option and to provide some information around online medical consultation from different online or print media.