Portea Medical partners with Delhi govt for Covid-19 home isolation services

Home healthcare provider Portea Medical on Thursday said it has tied up with the Delhi government to provide free home isolation services for Covid-19 positive patients.

The partnership will help free up hospital beds and intensive care units as well as reduce the burden on the healthcare system, a statement said.

“Understanding how more than 80% of Covid-19 positive patients are asymptomatic or have mild symptoms and do not require hospital care, Portea Medical has been helping the state in screening patients for home isolation,” the statement added.

Patients are remotely monitored through a tracking system that involves government doctors and experts from Portea for the entire mandated isolation period of 17 days.

Portea submits regular reports on patients’ condition, flagging off any health complications. It also offers teleconsultation services and notifies the appropriate government agency for cases that require hospitalisation.

Under the initiative, about 5,500 of the patients have been onboarded for home isolation and 160 transferred to hospitals. The number of patients discharged from isolation after getting disease-free stands at 1,900.

“At Portea, we have been leveraging technology to provide end-to-end home healthcare services to customers for over 7 years and have developed the requisite capability and infrastructure at scale. This partnership is an opportunity for us to utilize this specialization and help the government manage the crisis with technology as an enabler,” Portea Medical CEO Meena Ganesh, said.

Separately, the platform has also launched a chatbot in association with the Goa government to answer people’s queries around the pandemic. It also launched home quarantine services to help people undertake a Covid-19 test at home and monitor their health over 14 days.

Incorporated in 2012, Portea was founded by Zachary Jones and Karan Aneja. It was acquired by serial entrepreneur couple Meena Ganesh and K Ganesh in 2013. It operates across five major segments -- chronic diseases, elderly care, post-surgery care, diabetes management, and chemotherapy at home.

The parent operator is also an importer, exporter, trader, wholesaler, distributor of drugs, medicines, injections and medical preparations used in homoeopathic, allopathic, ayurvedic and Unani branches of medicine, according to VCCEdge data.