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Practo, an Indian integrated healthcare company, on Wednesday announced that it has introduced vernacular language options for its teleconsultation service.
“This initiative will allow online consultation users to choose a doctor who can speak in their preferred language,” Practo said in an official release.
The options are meant to help break down the language barrier in patient-doctor communications on the platform for its 200 million unique users in the future, it said.
Currently, the service covers 15 languages including Hindi, Marathi, Tamil, Kannada and Bengali, with more to be added soon.
The initiative was launched as a pilot project earlier this year after a significant amount of user requests for the same, with Hindi as the alternate option for users to choose from.
During this time, 25 per cent of all online consultations on Practo were conducted in vernacular languages, with Hindi, Tamil, Marathi, and Kannada emerging as the preferred language(s) for consultation for users. Nearly 67 per cent of all vernacular consultations were from users living in non-metro cities. Furthermore, 65 per cent of all vernacular consults were from users aged 60 and above.
Siddhartha Nihalani, VP - Product Growth, Practo, said, “ In enabling interactions in native languages for online consultations - that undoubtedly enjoys wide acceptance - we hope to be one step closer to turning our vision of building access to quality healthcare into reality.”
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