Interviewing the actors of e-Sanjeevani - Day 01
We started our first interview with 3 doctors who regularly consult on e-sanjeevani to get a narrower- in detail perspective of how it works. Our main goal was to understand how the doctors define and practice health, how trust is built in telemedicine, what makes telemedicine feel sufficient and insufficient and lastly how the patients seek care through the platform.
The doctors working in this network have never met the nurses, the MLHPs- who stand in for them at the sub-centres. Yet their diagnoses depend entirely on these nurses’ observations. The nurse becomes the doctor’s eyes, ears, and hands.
A usual consultation is brief- mostly 2 minutes, sometimes 5. The doctor begins with patient history. For women, there are questions about menstrual cycles or contraception.
The examination is “head to toe” but specific to the complaint.
One doctor mentioned that “60% of sickness is cured psychologically,” emphasizing how reassurance, counselling, and trust often play such important roles in the process.
The doctor instructs. The nurse observes. Information travels back. Diagnosis follows. It is objective, structured, and relay-based. One doctor admitted that this might not be the “ideal” way to consult, but also added, “something is better than nothing.”
In cases of tech failure, the consultation does not stop, the professionals find workarounds like WhatsApp, phone calls or texting to connect with the nurses. This made us wonder - are they really relying on the e-Sanjeevani platform?Later that day, while talking to one of the officials of NHM Meghalaya, we understood that e-Sanjeevani operates on a hub-and-spoke model with 53 doctors (11 dedicated, rest juggling OPDs), but faces significant friction from undertrained/busy hybrid practitioners, erratic medicine and equipment supply chains, no local diagnostic labs, and an inability to onboard private doctors due to cost, pushing locals toward more available quacks.
If you’ve worked within public health systems, telemedicine, or government healthcare programs or have perspectives we should be considering we’d love to hear from you. You can write to us at [email protected].
Until next time <3 :)













