Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has the potential to bring telemedicine to the mainstream in India. In two decades of promising efforts by Indian Space Research Organization and other stakeholders, there are grey areas in the policy and regulatory sector being filled in only off late with Government of India issuing the Telemedicine Practice Guidelines in March 2020 to encourage wide adoption of Telemedicine by Registered Medical Practitioners.
Methods: We aim to narratively trace the history of telemedicine in India, enlist the current actions and prospects for Indian telemedicine journey. We use a case study to supplement the arguments made on the role of public and private stakeholders in deploying telemedicine to scale strengthening healthsystems to achieve Universal Health Coverage.
Results: Challenges of laws governing cross border consultations, lack of digital health standards, infrastructural limitations and reimbursement mechanisms are opined upon. We discuss avenues to explore during and in the post pandemic era such as telerehabilitation, implementing telemedicine for AYUSH system of medicine and scope for private enterprises in pivoting the initiatives for facilitating PPP model of service delivery.