too embarrassed to deal directly with doctors on sexual and psychological problems a lot of indians are logging on to virtual clinics for faceless medical advicevinay singh name changed could never muster the courage to talk to doctor uncle about his bedroom woes the 28yearold noidabased entrepreneur suffered from premature ejaculation for months till he stumbled upon a mobile app which offers private and anonymous consultations with qualified doctorssingh immediately downloaded the app registered with just his initials as user id and shared his concern in the free query section within 24 hours ten sexologists responded with advice he booked a telephonic consultation with the one whose suggestions he found most practical thanks to him i managed to overcome the problem he sayssingh is among a growing number of indians who are turning to mobileandweb consultations to seek help for conditions they are too embarrassed to discuss face to face with doctors log on to the open questions section of lybrate a mobile and ehealth service launched in january 2015 and you see countless queries about genital rashes excessive sweating and sexually transmitted infectionsdownloaded by 3 million users lybrate receives nearly 7000 queries daily related to sexual health followed by 5000 questions on contraception 4000 on dermatological issues and 1000 on psychological problems close to 700 users complain about bad breath daily says saurabh arora an iit delhi alumnus who cofounded the ehealth companyon icliniccarecom half of the 700 consultations every month are related to private issues says founder sanjoy mukerji evaidyacom sees similar traffic 50 of the 500 phone consultations facilitated are related to sexual and reproductive health issues and 10 to mental healthindian society has become liberal but sex and mental health are still taboo topics even people who have access to a psychiatrist or sexologist worry that someone will see them going to the clinic says dr pbn choudhary who heads evaidyamost ehealth companies have a panel of doctors lybrate claims to have 100000 specialists on board who respond to the basic queries for free or rs 99 depending on experience of the doctor often within two hours patients can consult specialists via text chat phone or video for a fee ranging from rs 200 to rs 5000 and receive scanned prescriptions by emailthe biggest draw is that patients can see a doctor without being seen we take utmost care to maintain the anonymity of patients we do ask for a mobile number and an email id for verification but the user can choose to display name age and gender are also optional fields says aroradr garima kaur a gynaecologist attached to lybrate says that patients often give fake names or just their first names the delhibased doctor says she has been approached by women who have been treated by multiple doctors for recurrent urinary tract infection but are still awkward about asking basic questions on personal hygiene for example what soap they should wash themselves withsex drugs and depressionamong women unwanted