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Thomas K. Thomas

New Delhi, March 21 Soon you may not have to carry your past medical records with you every time you visit a hospital. Technology giant IBM is in talks with leading healthcare service providers in the country to set up an integrated data system to enable more efficient sharing of data and information between hospitals.

This will, for instance, enable patients to access their case history online irrespective of the city or the hospital where he is getting treatment.

Speaking to Business Line, Mr Gaurav Shah, Vice-President, IBM India Private Ltd, said, “The market around information based medicine is growing rapidly, and IBM is working in this field on many fronts. The integrated data project, which IBM is initiating with healthcare providers in India is a unique solution that we have developed keeping in mind the needs of this market.”

IBM’s Global Delivery Centre has been involved in various projects related to health care globally. For example, the company is working with the US government and key regions such as NY State and North Carolina, to develop prototype electronic patient record systems.

“These applications and services have been developed with the objective of using cutting edge technology for addressing complex problems. They require deep industry expertise, data analytics, supercomputing, research. This is the kind of work that IBM has set itself up to be able to do. We want to bring these applications to India as well,” said Mr Shah.

IBM is also in talks with various Government agencies to offer its expertise in managing complex problems such as traffic management.

“We’ve worked with Stockholm to build a congestion management system that has lowered city centre traffic by 25 per cent and increased public transportation usage by 100,000 per day. And it’s not simply a case of running automated toll booths. It’s a comprehensive view of managing traffic flow in and out of the city, pollution, public revenue, etc. A tool like this can have applications in a dynamically growing country like India with its growing urbanisation,” said Mr Shah. IBM is also interested in bidding for the Rs 700 crore HR project being initiated by the Indian Railways.

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