The Ministry of Communications and Information Technology in partnership with the Apollo Hospitals will launch tele-medicine services on August 25.

Under the service, people can visit Common Service Centres (CSC) and fix an appointment for seeking expert consultancy with a doctor. The doctors at Apollo Hospitals will be able to provide consultancy to the patients using the video link facilities. People can also order generic drugs online.

The Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeitY) has a network of 1.5 lakh CSCs across the country and Apollo Hospitals will provide the services using the network.

The services will be launched in 60,000 CSCs across the country. The Ministry of Health will also extend the benefit of their Jan Aushadhi programme of delivery of generic drugs through the CSC network.

"The CSC and Bureau of Pharma PSU of India (BPPI) will sign an MoU for providing these generic drugs to citizens through CSC network," said a Ministry official, in a statement.