By Bishal Karki
Kathmandu: Nepal’s difficult geography and unequal access to healthcare have long complicated the delivery of medical services, particularly outside major urban centres. But alongside hospitals, clinics and traditional public-health campaigns, another channel of health communication has been expanding rapidly: the smartphone screen.
As internet connectivity has spread and digital habits accelerated during and after the COVID-19 pandemic, doctors in Nepal have increasingly turned to Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, Instagram and other platforms to communicate directly with the public.
Medical information that was once largely encountered inside hospitals, clinics or specialist publications now also arrives through short videos, infographics, livestreams and question-and-answer sessions.
This does not make social media a substitute for medical consultation. But it has created an increasingly visible space for doctors to explain health issues in accessible language — particularly for younger audiences, people living far from specialist facilities and Nepalis overseas looking for health information in their own language.
The emergence of the doctor as a digital communicator is therefore changing not only how medical information travels, but also raising questions about credibility, ethics, commercialisation and the boundary between public education and professional promotion.
Doctors Building Audiences Beyond the Clinic
Nepal’s medical social-media landscape includes general practitioners, specialists, health activists and doctors whose public identities extend beyond medicine.
Dr. Sandesh Lamsal
Dr. Sandesh Lamsal is among Nepal’s most visible doctor-creators on social media. He holds a Doctor of Medicine degree, described by his professional profile as equivalent to an MBBS, from Pavlov First Saint Petersburg State Medical University and is registered with the Nepal Medical Council.
His digital presence extends across Instagram, TikTok, YouTube and Facebook, where he has built a sizeable audience.
Lamsal’s content combines health awareness with fitness, lifestyle, social issues and short-form digital communication aimed particularly at younger audiences. His background also extends into sport: he holds a second-degree black belt in Taekwondo.
His online profile illustrates a broader development in medical communication: health information increasingly competes for attention in the same digital environment as entertainment, lifestyle and influencer content.
That can make medical information more accessible — but it also makes the distinction between a doctor, educator, public figure and social-media personality increasingly important.
Dr. Om Murti Anil
Cardiologist Dr. Om Murti Anil represents a different model of digital medical communication.
The founder and chairman of the National Cardiac Centre in Kathmandu, Anil holds an MD in Medicine from Tribhuvan University’s Institute of Medicine and a DM in Interventional Cardiology from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in New Delhi. He is also a Fellow of the American College of Cardiology.
His public communication has focused heavily on cardiovascular disease prevention, hypertension, lifestyle modification and heart-health awareness.
Rather than relying only on short-form content, Anil has used longer videos, written explanations and public-health campaigns to communicate medical information. He is also the author of health-awareness books including Ma Pani Doctor.
His approach demonstrates how social media can extend an older tradition of physician-led public-health education into an interactive digital environment.
Dr. Toshima Karki
Dr. Toshima Karki occupies an unusual position at the intersection of medicine, health advocacy and politics.
A general surgeon by training, Karki completed her MBBS at KIST Medical College and postgraduate training in general surgery through Kathmandu University. She has also been associated with Patan Hospital and previously served on the Nepal Medical Council.
Her medical activism preceded her entry into electoral politics. She became a Member of Parliament and subsequently served as Minister of State for Health and Population.
Karki’s public communication consequently extends beyond conventional health education. Her digital presence encompasses healthcare policy, medical education reform, public health, civic questions and political advocacy.
Her trajectory illustrates another dimension of the digital doctor: medical authority can evolve into broader public advocacy and, in some cases, political leadership.
Dr. Santosh Upadhyaya
Dr. Santosh Upadhyaya combines medicine with lifestyle communication and an unusually strong media background.
A medical doctor, entrepreneur and health communicator, Upadhyaya also became Mr. Nepal 2019 and represented Nepal at Mister Supranational 2021, where he finished as third runner-up.
His social-media presence combines health education, physical fitness, lifestyle and public-awareness themes.
The visual character of such content can make health communication particularly attractive to younger digital audiences. At the same time, it demonstrates how dramatically the public image of a doctor can change when medicine enters an influencer-driven media environment.
Why the Format Works
One reason doctors can build large audiences online is language.
Medical education often relies heavily on English and technical terminology. On social media, however, doctors can explain the same concepts conversationally in Nepali and, where appropriate, through regional expressions and everyday examples.
A complicated medical concept can become a minute-long video. A discussion about diet can begin with food found in an ordinary household. Questions that patients may hesitate to raise in a crowded clinic can become subjects of livestream discussions or educational posts.
Topics including mental health, menstrual hygiene and sexual health can also be discussed in a digital environment where audiences may initially feel more comfortable observing or asking questions remotely.
The result is a form of health communication that is faster, more conversational and potentially more accessible than traditional medical literature.
But accessibility should not be confused with clinical care.
A general video explaining symptoms cannot diagnose the individual watching it. Nor can follower numbers demonstrate that online information has produced better health outcomes.
That distinction is crucial.
Reaching Beyond Nepal’s Major Medical Centres
Digital communication has particular potential in a country where specialist healthcare remains concentrated in major urban centres.
Someone living far from Kathmandu or another large city may not have immediate access to a specialist, but may still be able to watch a cardiologist explain hypertension, a surgeon discuss warning signs requiring medical attention or a doctor clarify misconceptions about a commonly discussed treatment.
For Nepal’s substantial overseas population, Nepali-language health content can provide another form of accessibility, particularly when navigating unfamiliar healthcare systems abroad.
Yet social media cannot solve the underlying problems of physical access to healthcare.
A video cannot perform an examination, diagnostic test or emergency procedure. The most useful role of digital health communication may therefore be educational: helping people understand health risks, recognise when professional care may be necessary and navigate medical information more intelligently.
When Health Advice Meets the Attention Economy
The same platforms that allow doctors to reach hundreds of thousands of people also reward speed, simplicity and engagement.
Medicine often requires precisely the opposite.
Symptoms can have multiple causes. Treatments depend on individual histories. Risks require qualification. A responsible medical explanation may therefore be less dramatic than the content rewarded by an algorithm.
Short-form medical content creates an obvious danger: viewers may mistake general education for personalised medical advice.
Commercialisation adds another complication.
Doctors and health influencers operate in digital environments where sponsorships, wellness products, supplements, diagnostic services and commercial collaborations are common. When financial relationships are not clearly disclosed, audiences may struggle to distinguish independent medical education from marketing.
Digital misinformation creates a further challenge. Doctors who communicate online must operate in an environment where inaccurate medical advice, misleading claims and manipulated content can spread rapidly, making credibility and verification increasingly important.
Nepal Already Has Ethical Rules — The Question Is How They Apply Online
The rapid expansion of doctor-led social media does not exist entirely outside Nepal’s medical ethics framework.
The Nepal Medical Council’s Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct permits doctors to participate in health and medical education, while requiring information given to the public to be factual, balanced and objectively verifiable.
The code also warns against using medical education to canvass for patients or promote a doctor’s practice.
More specifically, its provisions concerning practice websites and social media state that doctors should not post medical activities on platforms such as Facebook with the intention of procuring patients or engaging in self-promotion.
This creates one of the most important questions surrounding Nepal’s emerging doctor-influencer culture:
Where does legitimate public-health education end and professional self-promotion begin?
The distinction is not always straightforward.
A cardiologist explaining heart-disease prevention may be performing a valuable public service. A doctor simplifying medical terminology may improve public understanding. But the same account may simultaneously strengthen the doctor’s personal brand, attract patients or generate commercial opportunities.
Digital platforms collapse boundaries that were once easier to identify.
Doctors Are Also Dealing With Better-Informed — and Sometimes Misinformed — Patients
Social media has changed communication inside the clinic as well.
Patients increasingly arrive having already searched their symptoms, watched medical videos or encountered discussions about possible diagnoses and treatments.
Sometimes that knowledge helps them ask better questions.
Sometimes it introduces misinformation.
Doctors consequently face a communication task that extends beyond diagnosis and treatment. They increasingly have to explain why something encountered online may be incomplete, misleading or irrelevant to an individual patient’s condition.
Digital communication skills are therefore becoming relevant not only to doctors who become content creators, but also to doctors treating patients shaped by the online information environment.
Traditional Medicine Enters the Conversation Too
Nepal’s health-information ecosystem also includes traditional, folk and Ayurvedic practices.
Social media places these traditions in direct conversation — and sometimes conflict — with modern scientific medicine.
Doctors who discuss traditional remedies can play a useful role by examining their safety and evidence rather than simply dismissing practices familiar to large sections of the population.
But this area requires particular caution. Cultural familiarity does not itself establish medical effectiveness, just as popularity on social media does not establish scientific validity.
The Digital Stethoscope
The rise of doctors on social media represents more than a change in publicity.
It is changing the route through which medical knowledge reaches the public.
A doctor can now communicate with an audience far larger than the number of patients who could ever enter a consulting room. That offers an extraordinary opportunity for preventive-health education, myth-busting and public awareness.
But scale brings responsibility.
Medical creators must balance accessibility with accuracy, engagement with professional restraint and personal visibility with ethical obligations. Regulators, meanwhile, face the challenge of applying established professional standards to communication technologies that evolve far faster than traditional medical institutions.
Social media cannot replace hospitals, doctors or face-to-face diagnosis.
But in Nepal, the smartphone is increasingly becoming one of the places where the public first encounters medical information.
That makes the digital screen a powerful addition to the public-health landscape — provided the information travelling through it remains accurate, transparent and ethically responsible.
