Chatbot that helps you skip hospital queues among Vijay’s new tech initiatives for healthcare system in Tamil Nadu

4 min readChennaiUpdated: Jul 14, 2026 10:48 PM IST

Chief Minister C Joseph Vijay launched the Tamil Nadu Health Foundation’s online portal, Nalam TN. (File photo)

Tamil Nadu on Tuesday unveiled two parallel initiatives that together signalled a shift in how the state intends to strengthen its public healthcare system — one seeking to mobilise private philanthropy for government hospitals and the other attempting to digitise patients’ first point of contact with the public health system.

Chief Minister C Joseph Vijay launched the Tamil Nadu Health Foundation’s online portal, Nalam TN, a platform designed to channel donations from companies, alumni of government medical colleges, philanthropists and ordinary citizens into government hospitals. Alongside it, Health Minister K G Arunraj announced the rollout of “Nalam AI”, a WhatsApp-based service that will allow patients to generate outpatient (OP) tickets, book appointments in select departments and receive prescriptions and laboratory reports digitally.

The two initiatives address different layers of the same system: one seeks additional financial resources beyond the state budget, while the other attempts to simplify patient movement through government hospitals.

Nalam TN portal

Unlike conventional donation drives directed at individual hospitals, the Nalam TN portal introduces a state-level pooled fund that can finance needs extending across multiple institutions. According to the Tamil Nadu Health Foundation, the fund can be deployed for common infrastructure shared by hospitals, statewide disease programmes such as cancer, dialysis, trauma care and mental health, civil works across multiple institutions, high-cost surgeries for patients requiring specialised treatment, and emergency situations such as disasters or epidemics.

The foundation says the pooled model is intended to complement, rather than replace, existing government health financing mechanisms such as the state health budget, the Chief Minister’s Comprehensive Health Insurance Scheme and the National Health Mission. Instead of confining donations to a single institution, the fund allows resources to be allocated to areas identified as having the greatest need.

The concept received immediate support during its launch. Caplin Point Laboratories and Apollo Hospitals each contributed Rs 1 crore through their corporate social responsibility programmes, while Titan Engineering and Automation donated Rs 60 lakh. In a symbolic contrast to the corporate donations, S Sathya, a Chennai resident who had delivered her child at the Government Hospital for Women and Children in Egmore two years ago, contributed Rs 1,000 to the initiative.

Running alongside the funding platform is the government’s attempt to digitise outpatient registration through WhatsApp.

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Nalam AI

The first phase of Nalam AI has been introduced in 22 districts. Through the chatbot, patients can generate OP tickets before reaching a hospital, reducing time spent in registration queues. Initially, appointment booking has been introduced for the Department of Cardiology at Rajiv Gandhi Government General Hospital in Chennai. Once a patient arrives at the hospital, geo-fencing technology will confirm the person’s presence and automatically generate a consultation token, according to the Health Department.

Patients will also be able to receive prescriptions and laboratory reports directly through WhatsApp. Aadhaar is optional rather than mandatory, and the system allows family members or friends to obtain OP tickets on behalf of patients using OTP verification. Officials said people without smartphones can access the service through relatives or nearby e-Seva centres. The conventional walk-in OP registration system will continue alongside the digital platform.

The digital initiative arrives in a state that has long been regarded as one of India’s earliest adopters of coordinated public health information systems. Over successive decades, Tamil Nadu developed extensive disease surveillance, maternal and child health monitoring and programme-based health databases. Yet, inside many government hospitals, outpatient registration, patient records and movement across departments have largely continued through fragmented and paper-based processes, particularly in high-volume tertiary care institutions. The new system attempts to digitise that first interaction between the patient and the hospital while integrating appointment scheduling, prescriptions and diagnostic reports into a single mobile interface.

The launch coincided with a broader expansion of public health infrastructure. CM Vijay inaugurated buildings and medical equipment worth Rs 139.47 crore across government hospitals, including facilities at Kilpauk Government Medical College Hospital, the Government Headquarters Hospital at Paramakudi and 78 newly constructed primary health centres and health sub-centres. He also distributed appointment orders to 751 Assistant Medical Officers and 1,393 Grade II Health Inspectors recruited through the Medical Services Recruitment Board, as the state simultaneously expands both its healthcare infrastructure and workforce.

Arun Janardhanan is an experienced and authoritative Tamil Nadu correspondent for The Indian Express. Based in the state, his reporting combines ground-level access with long-form clarity, offering readers a nuanced understanding of South India’s political, judicial, and cultural life - work that reflects both depth of expertise and sustained authority.

Expertise

Geographic Focus: As Tamil Nadu Correspondent focused on politics, crime, faith and disputes, Janardhanan has been also reporting extensively on Sri Lanka, producing a decade-long body of work on its elections, governance, and the aftermath of the Easter Sunday bombings through detailed stories and interviews.

Key Coverage Areas:

State Politics and Governance: Close reporting on the DMK and AIADMK, the emergence of new political actors such as actor Vijay’s TVK, internal party churn, Centre–State tensions, and the role of the Governor.

Legal and Judicial Affairs: Consistent coverage of the Madras High Court, including religion-linked disputes and cases involving state authority and civil liberties.

Investigations: Deep-dive series on landmark cases and unresolved questions, including the Tirupati encounter and the Rajiv Gandhi assassination, alongside multiple investigative series from Tamil Nadu.

Culture, Society, and Crisis: Reporting on cultural organisations, language debates, and disaster coverage—from cyclones to prolonged monsoon emergencies—anchored in on-the-ground detail.

His reporting has been recognised with the Ramnath Goenka Award for Excellence in Journalism.

Beyond journalism, Janardhanan is also a screenwriter; his Malayalam feature film Aarkkariyam was released in 2021. ... Read More