09 Aug 2020: PIB Summary & Analysis

August 9th, 2020 PIB:- Download PDF Here

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. GeM 4.0
2. eSanjeevani

1. GeM 4.0

Context:

Government e Marketplace (GeM) organised the fourth edition of the National Public Procurement Conclave (NPPC) in association with the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).

About GeM:

• The Government e-Marketplace is a dedicated online platform where goods and services can be procured by various organizations and departments under the Government of India, and by the PSUs also.
• GeM is aimed at enhancing the efficiency, speed and transparency in public procurement of goods and services. It also serves the objective of eliminating corruption.
• It is administered by the Ministry of Commerce and Industries under the Directorate General of Supplies and Disposals (DGS&D)
• It is a completely paperless, cashless and system-driven e-marketplace that enables the procurement of common use goods and services with a minimal human interface.
• It is an online marketplace for government officers and others for procurement.

About GeM 4.0:

• GeM 4.0 adds more features to the GeM platform. Some of the new features include:
  • Timely payment to the sellers.
  • Advanced search engine – NLP-based (Natural language Processing).
  • Demand aggregation – Buyers would be able to collate multiple orders of the same product for various consignees across multiple organisations in the same Ministry.
  • Staggered delivery – flexible delivery allowed.
  • Redesigned bidding module by way of item-wise and consignee-wise bidding.
  • Better grievance redressal mechanism in place.
  • Portal is integrated with advanced analytics, artificial intelligence, machine learning and deep learning.
  • Revamped user interface.
  • Price variance included in the platform making cataloguing easy for sellers.
  • Ease of payment – GeM is integrating with multiple banks and ERPs.
  • New categories and services.
  • Seller rating introduced.
  • Vendors and buyers would be able to interact with each other so that suitable requirements can be designed with market research.
  • Central Public Sector Enterprises (CPSEs) will now have dedicated pages.

2. eSanjeevani

Context:

1.5 lakh tele-consultations completed through ‘eSanjeevani’ and ‘eSanjeevaniOPD’.

About the National Teleconsultation Service:

• The Health Ministry launched the National Teleconsultation Service to facilitate telemedicine aiming to provide healthcare services to patients in their homes.
• This offers communication between doctors and patients who are geographically separated.
• There are two types of telemedicine services:
  • eSanjeevani: Doctor-to-Doctor
    • This is being deployed in 155,000 Health and Wellness Centres under Ayushman Bharat
  • eSanjeevani OPD: Doctor-to-Patient (teleconsultation)
    • This is the government’s flagship telemedicine technology developed by the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing in Mohali.
  • It has been implemented by 23 states.
  • The panel of doctors on the service are drawn by the state governments.
  • The patients do not have to pay any fees for the teleconsultation service. They are also given ePrescriptions (electronic prescriptions).

The government has also interlinked 50 government medical colleges in the country for tele-education, e-Learning and online medical consultation under the National Medical College Network (NMCN) scheme.

What is telemedicine?

As per the World Health Organisation, telemedicine is the delivery of health care services, where distance is a critical factor, by all health care professionals using IT for diagnosis, treatment and prevention of disease and injuries, research and evaluation, etc., all in the interests of advancing the health of individuals and their communities.

• The term ‘telemedicine’ was framed in the seventies.
• It involves the use of various types of ICTs (information communication technologies).
• It facilitates patients’ and rural practitioners’ access to specialist health services and support.
• It comprises videoconferencing, transmission of still medical images, document sharing, remote monitoring of vital signs, etc.

Read previous PIB here.

August 9th, 2020 PIB:- Download PDF Here