girish-kulkarni

Girish Kulkarni
CIO, Cytecare Cancer Hospitals

Cytecare Cancer Hospitals are engaged in providing quality cancer care in India, Africa and other Asian countries. Talking to Elets News Network (ENN), Girish Kulkarni, CIO, Cytecare Cancer Hospitals, gives an overview on how the hospital network plans to revolutionise cancer treatment through personalised care and the role of technology in achieving this novel aim.

What are the main objectives of the Cytecare?

Cytecare is driven by three main objectives: fighting cancer the right way, offering personalised care and designing care plans and protocols focussed on specific body parts and organs.

Providing personalised care with emphasis on patient care is central to our vision. For us, patient is the centre of our universe, be it systems or processes — operationally, clinically and technically. Our care plans and protocols are focussed on specific body parts and organs.

Cytecare is partnering with various technology and medical equipment players for its hospital. How cloud deployment models (private, public, and hybrid) weigh in implementing strategic decisions? Also, brief us about the kind of technologies being adapted by the hospital to support its operations?

From the business perspective, we use Private Cloud for all our core and internal patient-facing application services because they are more reliable, available, flexible and secure. The management of this cloud is easier too. We use Public Cloud for all our Non-Core, external and fringe application services.

We have tried to build a Hybrid Network which is giving us all the flexibility to use, manage and charge back along with a greater level of security and control.

However, there is no one-size-fitsall model. All the decisions are purely driven by business requirements.

Diagnostic radiology has been playing an important role in the provision of healthcare. Whats your opinion on it? How Cytecare is implementing this in its portfolio of offerings?

Our diagnostic radiology is tightly integrated with nuclear medicine and our radiation planning applications and systems. This gives a 360-degree view to the care providers for faster, better, effective and informed outcome based decisions at the point of care.

The next logical step for us is to add machine learning and cognitive capabilities into our stack for improving our diagnosis capabilities. These are the tools to enhance the quality of work our radiologists are doing. Its an extension of their analytical and decision-making capabilities. We should be there in the next two-three quarters.

Compared to other industries, technology has been significantly under-utilised in the healthcare industry to improve operational efficiency. What measures should be taken by the sector to adopt the cloud computing technology and perfect diagnostic radiology?

Cloud has caught up but is majorly on the fringe of the application service stack. Healthcare providers have been extremely cautious on moving the Core Application Service stack to the Public Cloud. The greater movement has been around deployment of large Private and Hybrid Cloud service stack. The Public Cloud deployments are surely catching up there at the top. Also, the standards and regulations, including governance framework from the state, play a major role here in reassuring the businesses to adopt the Public Cloud.

What are the challenges faced in leveraging cloud computing and diagnostic radiology for healthcare in India?

I feel that there is a serious dearth of quality human resources in diagnostic radiology services in India. Machine learning and cognitive capabilities will be able to leapfrog the existing capabilities and quality to greater heights. However, there is not much specifically happening in the cognitive space, which is easy to deploy and adapt. It is still evolving.

However, all these technologies are good to deploy or adopt. Any investment on technology has to be looked at critically to ensure that this doesnt add to the cost of service to the patient.

Be a part of Elets Collaborative Initiatives. Join Us for Upcoming Events and explore business opportunities. Like us on Facebook , connect with us on LinkedIn and follow us on Twitter , Instagram.

Tags:

Related Magazine


whatsapp--v1