A truly world-class, fully integrated healthcare facility, where each user can experience the easy and transparent workflow, whether staff, in-patient or outpatient.

The Apollo Tyres Group forayed into the healthcare sector recently with a 500-bed hospital, Artemis Health Institute (AHI) in Gurgaon. The healthcare arm of Apollo Tyres is a wholly owned subsidiary of PTL Enterprises Ltd – a part company of the Onkar S Kanwar group – and will, in the long term, have diverse interests in medical education, research and manufacturing of medical accessories.

The Gurgaon hospital, is a multi-super speciality facility with specialisations in Cardiology, Cancer, Orthopedics, Cosmetic Surgery, Obstetrics & Gynaecology, Neurosciences, Minimal Invasive Surgery and Ophthamology. Apart from the super-specialities, AHI also offers specialised programmes and clinics for the special needs of its customers such as Artemis Breast Clinic, Asthma Care Clinic, Well Woman Programme, and utive Health Check-up.

Artemis Health Sciences (AHS) Pvt. Ltd. plans to increase it presence in a phased manner. Phase 1 was the setting up of the hospital project (under which 206 of the 500- beds are ready and functional). The next is to encompass the establishment of a world-class clinical research facility. Phase 3 would entail the manufacture of high technology hospital consumables, and the final phase would be the creation of an institute for medical training and education for nurses and paramedics. Over time, AHS is looking to set up an all-India network of such facilities in cities, which have the highest gap between felt demand and supply of quality healthcare services. A few months ago, Philips announced a technology partnership with Artemis Health Institute to collaborate in its worldwide research and development efforts.

The hospital won the eHEALTH Award for the ‘Best ICT Enabled Hospital of the Year‘ recently. This award was given to Artemis Health Institute for being equipped with the latest technology in predictive, diagnostic and therapeutic imaging, along with the highest levels of in-patient monitoring, and a paperless and film-less Hospital Information System. Artemis is the first installation in India to offer film-less and paperless environment, thanks to the HIS, which has eliminated the need for storage of large amounts of medical records in paper form as everything is filed and maintained online. The HIS provides concise and easy to read summaries to the doctors and patients. Incidentally the project was implemented in a very short time of six months.

The facility situated in Gurgaon is an example of a well-planned infrastructure supported by a Hospital Information System (HIS) provided by IBA Health a leading health IT company with an impressive international footprint. The HIS, suitably customised by the Artemis IT team with support from the vendor takes into account each detail and makes the use of it by the hospital staff and doctors as easy as possible. The hospital management has since the beginning shown a commitment towards making the hospital environment as paperless as possible and continuously urges the staff and doctors on the panel to use the HIS for all functions. This commitment and vision is backed by an excellent support system with a dedicated team available 24/7 at a dedicated number in the hospital to solve any technical problem.

When we visited the facility there were a few things which struck us as unique, such as a general reception area, where the attendants ushered the visitors to the hospital into the relevant part of the hospital – the inpatients were guided towards one direction the out-patients towards the other, leaving no room for confusion.

OPD visitors are directed towards the OPD section, where the OPD staff helps them fill up a registration form, first time a patient visits the hospital they receive a unique lifetime registration number free of cost with a card. This unique identification number provides the complete details of the patient’s medical history as recorded at AHI during subsequent visits. Some excellent IT inputs/facilities here comprise of the twin display facility at the main registration desk, where when the patient details are being fed into the system, the patient/relative can see it and correct the attendant if necessary. After this they are escorted to the designated nurse station / relevant diagnostic area, and then the nurse co-ordinates their meeting with the doctor.

The vitals of patients waiting in the OPD is checked beforehand in a chamber close to the consultation room and logged into the HIS, so that precious time is not wasted, and the doctor can immediately diagnose the patient and move on to the next patient. Attendants, nurses and doctors, also help the HIS monitor each movement of the patient, by continuously feeding in the required details as well as logging the time of admittance, consultation and the whole gamut which helps provide Business Intelligence on factors such as average wait time, consultation time and so on.

At hospitals patients have to often run around the facility to access different diagnostic areas such as pathology labs and imaging facilities. Keeping this in mind, AHI has created a comprehensive suite of diagnostic services backed by leading-edge medical technology all at one place. The diagnostics department is located near the outpatient area so as to make getting any tests required an easy task. The same convenience is made available for the Wellness centre for women and the utive health check up centre.

The billing is kept apart from medical/clinical processes. The patients when they need to do tests, pay at the registration counter and their details are fed into the HIS; when they reach the diagnostics area, their name will automatically show up if they have paid for the tests and their tests will be done against that account, if they have not paid, their names will not show up at all.

The HIS is equipped to allow doctors access from their login ID to results of all tests, images from radiology and so on of their patients. The head surgeon may also view a real time video of a surgical procedure being performed by his team from his personal chamber. The HIS server uses 760 MB per day and the PACS server about 4 GB daily. The facility also has 3 terabytes of Storage Area Network.

The IT budget for the hospital project was INR 6.5 crores, which was very well used in equipping the hospital with TFT monitors and small desktop machines, thus there is no bulky equipment anywhere. Each bed in the ICU is provided with a bedside laptop, from where, the nurses and doctors can access and update patient vitals and details on the HIS. In the 32 bed ICU section the patient to nurse ratio is maintained at 1:1.

Another very interesting use of cutting edge technology is the introduction of pneumatic chutes in the hospital connecting the wards to the laboratory and pharmacy. The test samples are collected and bar coded from the patient bedside and sent via the chute to the lab where the tests are done. The pharmacy too sends medication required for patients to the wards via the pneumatic chute, thus reducing the need for movement and saving on time. All this technology truly helps the hospital to achieve the highest level of quality patient monitoring and care.

Specialised Clinics at Artemis Health Institute are another example of AHI’s commitment towards developing patient-centric care environment. These clinics are dedicated towards the treatment of a specific disease group and are a one-stop destination for the entire gamut of consultation, diagnostic and therapeutic services pertaining to a particular disease group. The primary benefits that a specialised clinic offers to the patients are decreased waiting time between referral, diagnosis and treatment, enhanced peace of mind, more privacy, a hassle free experience throughout diagnosis and treatment.

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