DW BUREAU / Chandigarh PGIMER's Tele-consultation, an initiative to serve the registered outdoor patients at the hospital that started on May 19, has gone a step further to facilitate the patients by re-starting the OnLine Pre-registration facility to enable patients to pre-book their tele-consultation. Detailing about the initiative Prof. Jagat Ram, Director PGIMER stated, "In the thick of COVID-19, we had suspended OPDs fearing transmission of the contagious virus to patients considering the huge footfall, at our OPDs. However, our initiative of tele-consultation gained popularity over time which has caused the demand to outstrip the provided quantum of service. So,we took this step to broad-base the service to meet the consistently increasing demand and cater to the health needs of more of our non-COVID patients ensuring their safety with this initiative." The Director further added, "It has been observed over time that more and more people are now using this service, the number of teleconsultation cards made per day increased from approximately 500 to start with currently 1600 card per day, in fact a card is made at each counter every minute during the registration timing. It was in the interest of all that we increase the quantum of this service to meet the growing demand." (editor@dailyworld.in)