Japanese medical equipment maker Omron will roll out a telemedicine service in India, initially targeting the country's estimated 300 million people with high blood pressure, NIKKEI Asia reports.
Members paying about 1,000 rupees ($13.50) a month will input daily data into an app from Bangalore-based Terrals Technologies, which recently took on Omron as an investor. The ability to see clinicians from home will broaden patient access to medicine in underserved areas.
Omron will use accumulated member data to develop a system for suggesting proper medical care, based on a patient's condition.
India is a lifestyle disease hot spot where about 1 in 4 people have hypertension, by one international estimate. It had 77 million adults with diabetes in 2019, according to the International Diabetes Federation -- more than 10 times as many as Japan and second only to China. The IDF sees the number reaching more than 130 million in 2045.
Omron, the world's top manufacturer of blood pressure monitors, controls the majority of India's market. But the market itself is small, with just 2% of patients owning a blood pressure monitor, according to the company. Omron will tie the product in with the new service, giving purchasers of its monitors free access to the telemedicine service for a limited time.
Omron also plans to offer telehealth for heart disease using an electrocardiogram monitor.
India has few restrictions on telemedicine. To see patients remotely via app, physicians show them charges in advance and obtain their consent. Terrals served 300,000 patients in 2020.
Telehealth is growing across the globe amid the coronavirus pandemic. Omron, which now offers telemedicine in the U.K. and the U.S., plans to branch out into other emerging economies with the aim of serving 1 million patients a year by 2025.
Telehealth could also prove useful in rapidly aging Japan, where its introduction has run into such stumbling blocks as lower fees to providers.