IT Advancements

An Assemblage of the Literate

The two-day Healthcare-IT summit at Goa deliberated on the advances that would come about in the near future with the union between IT and healthcare

T Gopinath, Director, Public Sector and Healthcare Practice, HP Consulting and Intergration Services

Microsoft's mission is to develop technologies in partnerships that enable transformation of healthcare in India so that we are able to increase patient safety and quality of care, reduce the healthcare cost burden for individuals and create an environment for remote delivery of care for people in rural areas, said Rohit Kumar, Country Head, Public Sector and Health Services, Microsoft. He was speaking at a two-day Healthcare IT Executive MindXchange-'IT Advancements in Healthcare Delivery' on September 1-2, 2007, hosted by Frost and Sullivan. Express Healthcare was one of the official media partners for the event.

At this summit, the who's who from hospitals, Government officials and major health IT companies addressed and discussed various issues in IT adoption in hospitals.

The summit opened with Jayashri Kulkarni, Director, Healthcare Practice, South Asia and Middle East, Frost and Sullivan, giving the welcome address followed by an address by the guests of honour, Dr SK Bhattacharya, Additional Director General, ICMR, Government of India (GOI); VC Sharma, Chairman and Managing Director, HSCC India Ltd, GOI and Dr Ashok Kumar, Deputy Director General and Director, Central Bureau of Health Intelligence, GOI. In this respect, Dr Kumar unveiled plans to connect rural centres via telemedicine in tier-1 hospitals.

Rohit Kumar, Country Head, Public Sector and Health Services, Microsoft

"IT adoption in healthcare delivery has grown at both process and enterprise level to accomplish a wide range of objectives, chief of which are the improvement in process efficiency enterprise effectiveness and customer satisfaction. The implementation of enterprise applications help in achieving process, reduction in operating costs, inventory reduction, improved customer service, higher profitability and tapping new business opportunities," said Sandeep Sinha, Programme Manager-Health IT and Healthcare Delivery Practice, Frost and Sullivan, South Asia and Middle East.

Giving a presentation of a 'Digital Hospital', Daljit Singh, President-Strategy, Fortis Healthcare Limited explained how in a digital hospital, the entire history of the patient—right from the cradle to his death bed would be all recorded in a digitised version. "However, to establish a digital hospital, one has to have a vision which will help the organisation realise where exactly it is heading," added Singh, while announcing that Fortis would be transformed to one in two years.

The day also saw top notch IT heads giving presentations which included experts from Microsoft, HP, InterSystems, Agfa and Sobha Rennaisance. T Gopinath, Director, Public Sector and Healthcare Practice, HP Consulting and Integration Services, gave a presentation ‘National Health Grid/State-wide Healthcare Information Networks’. He unveiled the project undertaken by the Government of Maharashtra along with HP to connect 19 hospitals affiliated with medical colleges thus transforming the much talked about concept of connected healthcare into a reality. He mentioned that HP's vision for the healthcare market was to improve the quality and decrease the cost of healthcare supported by products, solutions and services which responds in a seamless, secure, reliable fashion with access to relevant clinical and administrative information.

Kerry Stratton, Managing Director-Healthcare, Intersystems Corporation, USA

Two international experts-Kerry Stratton, Managing Director-Healthcare, InterSystems Corporation, USA and Dr Samuel Yeak, Chief Medical Informatics Officer, Tan Tock Seng Hospital, Singapore respectively spoke on ‘Global Impact of Connected Healthcare-what does it mean for India’ and ‘Move from Manual to Digital Record-Its Impact on Customers, Cost and Efficiency.’

The second day commenced with Melbourne-based MDI imaging Group's COO Clinton Athaide giving a presentation on ‘The Roadmap for successful PACS-RIS Projects.’ "In Australia, radiology is an industry and follows the norms of a service industry," he said.

He also elaborated the need to integrate PACS and RIS which not only enhances the efficiency of health systems, but also makes business and financial sense. This was followed by a panel discussion— ‘Connected Healthcare in India-What are the challenges, what are the first steps?’ presided over by InterSystem's Stratton with eminent members like Colonel S Katoch, Director-MS (Automation), DGMS Army; Dr Kashi Nath, Sr Director-Technical, NIC; A Vijayrajan, CIO & CTO, Manipal Health Systems; Dr Dharminder Nagar, MD, Paras Healthcare; and Dr GSK Velu, MD, Metropolis Health Services. A discussion entailed not just the challenges for connected healthcare in India but also the priority of healthcare providers.

On the whole, this two-day conference focused on the challenges to take IT to the rural level, the challenge of connectivity and infrastructure, the goal of the Government to establish telemedicine centres to provide primary healthcare and the role of tier-1 hospitals in establishing this connectivity, their total expenditure, challenges and Government’s role in the entire process.

EH News Bureau