Tech Explained

@ Indraprastha Apollo

PCQ Bureau

05 Nov 2002 07:02 IST

New Update

The Indraprastha Apollo hospital, Delhi, has automated most of its hospital-management processes. Their network consists of about 250 nodes on a 100 Mbps switched network. They use a Hospital Information system from Wipro Healthcare, which records information from the time a patient is registered at the hospital to when he’s discharged. It also maintains medicine inventory, blood-donation records, etc.

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Apollo Heartline

Apollo has introduced a pocket-sized, mobile ECG transmitter, which transmits a patient’s ECG to the Apollo Heart Command Centre. At the symptoms of a chest pain, the patient attaches the leads of the transmitter on his chest and calls up any Apollo Heart Command Centre in the country. The ECG signals are transmitted over the phone to the computer at the Command Centre, which records the ECG in just 55 secs. The specialist at the Centre compares the ECG with the patient’s baseline ECG, which is stored in a database and gives immediate advice (in case of a heart attack a mobile Coronary Care Unit is arranged).

A second opinion from the patient’s treating doctor is taken by sending him a fax of the ECG. This service is provided free of cost to all coronary bypass surgery and angioplasty patients who have undergone treatment in Apollo Hospitals for a period of three months. More at
Imcldel@giasdl01.vsnl.net.in

The radiology department uses RadWorks, an imaging software, to record all scans (MRI, CT scan, etc) so that they can be viewed from any node. In the oncology department, the hospital uses robotic arms for operations.

They offer telemedicine services to 16 remote areas in the country over a video-conferencing setup on 384 kbps ISDN links. The Apollo hospitals at Chennai and Hyderabad are also connected to this. They are now considering a shift from ISDN to satellite links.

A more recent implementation in the hospital has been an intranet, and there are plans to introduce a document-management system.

www.apollolife.com is run by the online healthcare division.

Inputs from R Srinivasan and Neelesh Katiyar of Apollo Hospitals

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