The benchmark that I often keep is that it should be totally paperless,says Ashokaan VRS, Group CIO, Columbia Asia Hospital, Banglore. In conversation with Sruti Ghoshal, ENN.
How upgraded is your hospital in terms of using EMR and HIS?
I would say we are fairly well automated.The benchmark that I often keep is that it should be totally paperless. We are on the verge of achieving this where OPD has become 95 percent paperless and in patient department it should be 60 to 70 percent paperless.
What are the solutions you have adopted and from whom you have taken such solution?
There are four major applications that run through the entire eco-system and are more or less common to all scenarios with little modifications. The first is Cap 21 which is a home grown ERP system. The second is allied system,which manages the entire work floor.The third one deal with radiology and it has been designed by the company with whom we have partnered for six years now and the fourth is again Cap 21.
What are the latest medical devices the hospital has introduced recently?
From the speciality perspective many new devices have been deployed. The endoscopy which connects to the integral organs and we have the cath lab imager. In terms of the departments in the hospitals, all the verticals are automated in terms of information flow, expecting the key departments like Operation Theatre which are still handled manually.
The USP of our hospital is that patients dont carry their records, thats the biggest selling point that all the patient records are digitised
In your opinion how costeffective is the market for health IT in India?
Health IT market in India is not costeffective.Cost-effectiveness comes from different perspective, how affordable to use or how beneficial it is.If you ask me from the point of view of benefit then I would say that it is not closely connected and makes it highly resource constraint. So when you deploy these solutions they are quite expensive and not that well integrated.You cannot have an integrated healthcare solution.
What is the USP of your hospital?
The USP of our hospital is that patients dont carry their records, thats the biggest selling point is that all the patients records are digitised and it is available across all the departments, the patient doesnt have to go running up and down to find the concerned department.
What are your future plans for expansion?
As per IT is concerned we have laid out our objective for next couple of years. We are going through transformation journey. We shared our IT roadmap with Infosys a year and a half before. At this point, in Karnataka, we are having core key projects, the top five would be intelligence and analytical reporting space, information assurance programme to bring more IT enabled people to operate.Next we are looking at the new set of platform for implementing IT that can bring change in the ERP system and much more integrated with the medical devices. The main focus is on centralisation of the healthcare which would help people.
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