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How Tech Changed Healthcare
Indian healthcare has woken up: it knows it can't do without IT. Get an inside scoop of the amazing things it's doing with IT
Deepshika Yadav
Saturday, July 05, 2008
Gone are the days of those hand-scrawled notes, scribbled prescriptions, big
diagnostic charts, patient queues, and lost patient charts. Today, all this info
and critical details are no more than a keyboard click away. IT is fast bringing
an apace makeover of the healthcare industry and changing the face of
traditional doctor--patient relationship.
Healthcare, being an information intensive sector, is one of the key areas
that is benefiting from the use of information technology. The big Indian
hospitals have now realized that with IT they can not only automate their
medical processes, but also cut costs and increase the ROI. Technology has
become a constitutional part of healthcare and is addressing to many issues that
have been of concern for the industry for many decades. Picture archiving and
communication systems (PACS), Healthcare information systems (HIS), and
telemedicine are a few of the many IT applications in healthcare. IT has
bestowed enormous benefits such as creating a one-stop data warehouse for all
clinical activities, faster patient throughput and diagnosis, reduced manpower
requirement, and cases being referred overseas.
We talk all this and more with the help of 2 disparate case studies-one of an
ashram and other of a corporate hospital, where IT is working to the benefit of
both doctors and patients alike. Here's a peek into how Swami Ramdev's Patanjali
Yogpeeth treats 2 million patients a year, and a promising start-up hospital
-Artemis (paperless and filmless hospital).
Faith, Health, and IT
Dawn with yoga' seems to be a household punch line these days. All thanks to
Swami Ramdev's yog sessions on Aastha channel every morning.
With the mission of extending the basic mantra of yog to each and every
person was established Ramdev's Patanjali Yogpeeth, an ashram situated on the
holy banks of Ganga, in Haridwar. Patanjali Yogpeeth heals its patients through
yog and ayurved. Set up on about thirty five acres of land area, the ashram has
a large OPD that can house around 6000 to 10,000 patients, an IPD of 500 beds,
dental clinic vested with latest dental equipments which is the first of its
type to adopt yogic and ayurvedic methodology for treatment, team of 200
doctors, and attending to over 2500 patients daily, giving nerves to even some
of the best corporate hospitals.
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IT-a constitutional part of Patanjali
Challenges
Attending to over 2500 patients a day was not a facile task for the Yogpeeth.
Complexity of running the hospital, increasing no. of patients, keeping patient
and treatment records were posing a challenge to the hospital. The line-ups were
so long that many patients had to return untreated. On top of this with service
centers and yog teachers of Patanjali spread in every nook and corner of the
country, it was difficult to file and track their details related to work and
area under contribution.
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| Scientists at Dept. of Yog R&D |
Sunil Singh, IT Head |
Solutions
Patanjali took the help of IT to offer better services to the patients. With
Hospial Management System (HMS) and Human Resource Management System (HRMS) in
place, data is now collated at a single place. “Follow-up of patients is easy as
they just need to quote their ID and all details of patient treatment and
history would be available online. The process has made things work fast and
ensured that no patient is sent untreated. Also, we are able to track the
details of our yog teachers spread across the country,” informs Sunil Singh, IT
head of Patanjali.
The entire IT infrastructure of Patanjali is based on fibre optic cables that
connect all 7 blocks, providing 2 Mbps data transfer speed. Also, they have
placed access points at strategic locations within the main institute and their
6 sites located nearby. They have 4 IBM Servers (with Win 2003 server ), 2
backup servers, router from Cisco 3800 series, Firewall (SonicWall).
IT in Yoga
Scientists at the ashram are working to study the effects of yoga on body.
To monitor the effects on body, the doctors have some interesting tools in
place. For instance, polygraphs, the lie detectors used mainly for interrogating
people involved in crime, serves very useful tool in the hands of doctors.
“There is a 16 channel polygraph which can simultaneously record 16 variables
such as the heart rate, heart rate variability, cardiac output, the blood
pressure non-invasively, muscle strength, blink rate (especially interesting as
computer vision syndrome often results from a low blink rate), a metabolic
analyzer which evaluates oxygen consumed and lung functions, various equipments
for skill testing and evaluating performance. We also assess the nerve
conduction velocity and muscle tension,” speaks Dr. Shirley Telles, Chief
Research Consultant, Dept. of Yog R&D.
“We use computerized Windows-based programs for the tests to measure the
amount of oxygen consumed and carbon dioxide eliminated (particularly important
as the emphasis is on breathing practices-pranayama). A high-end telemetric
(wireless) physiological and neurological monitoring system in the new campus
(yoga village), which houses 500 cottages, is in the pipeline,” informs Dr.
Naveen KV, Research Consultant, Dept. of Yog R&D.
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