Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd (BPCL) has tied up with Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) to provide medical advisory and counselling services at Ghar, the highway retailing initiative of BPCL. After the pilot runs, the online medical advisory initiative will be rolled out to 26 more Ghar outlets across the country.

Further, emergency medical care in the form of ambulances and also tie ups with medical centres are being considered which is aimed at providing medical facilities to truck drivers.

S Ramesh, general manager — retail strategy, BPCL, told FE that two pilot runs of the online medical advisory services at Chennai and Hyderabad have already been conducted and will now be rolled out to more Ghar outlets across the country.

For this, BPCL has tied up with TCS to provide the technological know how, which essentially involves having the telemedicine backbone, informed Mr Ramesh. " We will be rolling out the initiative to 26 Ghar outlets across the country," said Mr Ramesh. Depending on the response, the initiative in the next six months will be rolled out to the remaining Ghar outlets across the country.

Ghar is the highway retailing venture of BPCL. Spread across the major highways in the country, the 54 Ghar outlets act as a one stop shop for fuelling, food and rest for the drivers.

The outlets are already equipped with the necessary infrastructure like computers and internet. The medical services entails having an online medical advisory and counselling services for the truck drivers. Thus for this, a customised website is being constructed, where drivers can log in and seek advice.

"The officers at the Ghar outlets will help the drivers access the website and seek counselling. The drivers can log in their requirement at one Ghar outlet and get the answers at the next outlet," said Mr Ramesh. The idea here is to provide advisory services for any medical related queries which the drivers may have.

The medical advisory is one part of the medical services which BPCL is looking to provide at its Ghar outlets. Mr Ramesh said that services like providing ambulance services and tie-ups with medical centres at various locations are being considered.

"The tie-ups will involve association with various players across the spread of Ghar outlets. Thus we will be speaking to various medical centres for possible tie-ups," said Mr Ramesh.