The Hindu Business Line : Read the pattern

Healthcare informaticians can make available all patient data at the right time to the care providers and also glean patterns that could shape treatment for the better.

GASTROENTEROLOGIST Dr Pirez makes an assessment of a patient diagnosed with cancer of the colon. He looks up an electronic record of her medical history and decides that surgery is the best course of action. In this instance, he favours an `anterior resection.' He uses the e-booking system to initiate the booking of the surgery.

And then comes in the administrative staff specialising in `health informatics.' He/she brings together all the information regarding this particular patient, and applies it intelligently.

For instance, since the patient has a known history of diabetes, that information is fed into the electronic system and the e-booking service selects the first appointment of the day as most appropriate. Thus the details are finalised at every turn.

At one end is the doctor, and the healthcare provider by way of hospital. At the other end is the patient. Healthcare informaticians use technology to act as an intelligent interface between these two sets of people/services.

Simply put, information needs to be accessible to clinical professionals in every location regardless of care settings. Healthcare Informaticians make this possible.

eWorld sounds out two key players for the action happening in this space.

Satya Kaliki

Satya Kaliki, Director, Global Product Management, iSOFT, says "Governments across the world are under pressure to deliver better healthcare to their citizens. With an ageing population in developed economies, the need for healthcare is only going to further increase. Necessary reforms require massive investments in IT. We are only at the beginning of the whole cycle. Such developments have triggered massive demands for Healthcare informaticians with domain expertise as well as an understanding of technology."

Kaliki says Healthcare Informatics is the collection, processing and maintenance of information in the field of healthcare. It is a broad field that encompasses several elements such as electronic medical records, access to knowledge-based information and digital libraries, digital imaging systems, telemedicine, clinical decision support, health policy and other related issues.

K. Vinayambika

K. Vinayambika, Director-Healthcare Practice, Cognizant, says a successful implementation of healthcare informatics solutions can provide extraordinary benefits for healthcare-related organisations, including financial savings, accessibility to comprehensive patient information, error reduction and greater operational efficiency.

Healthcare Informaticians are in demand in areas such as pharma drug research, studying clinical data, medical outcomes analysis, disease management, fraud management and claims analysis.

What basic requirements are in order to become healthcare informaticians?

They should have a holistic understanding of patient care. They are responsible for transforming the process of healthcare into an information repository model that addresses the information need of the entire patient care process, says Kaliki.

The industry is in a state of flux. New products are being launched everyday, business consolidations and mergers are becoming common, and there is a global drive on standardisation of health data. Healthcare informaticians, thus, need to be well-versed in both healthcare and the technology that drives it. "Some specialised services may also require a working knowledge of statistical concepts and tools, project management and regulatory knowledge," Vinayambika says.

With new health issues cropping up everyday, there is now an emphasis on understanding macro patterns of potential epidemics among communities.

Explaining the trend, Kaliki says, "Healthcare Informatics faces the challenge to leverage IT to develop powerful models of pattern recognition. Another challenge is the absence of uniform standards of prescription, diagnosis and terminologies among doctors. There is often a difference in terms practised among healthcare professionals. Though some standards have emerged, healthcare informatics is still grappling with the issues of uniformity."

Vinayambika emphasises that basic qualifications must include clinical experience and/or familiarity with medical and drug terminologies, aptitude for technology, knowledge of healthcare standards and good presentation skills.

Creativity is important too. As Kaliki asserts, "Healthcare informatics is not about programming and coding but involves the ability to think abstractly and to anticipate patterns. In addition to designing versatile models for information-capturing at each stage of patient care, the healthcare informatician's responsibility includes designing and defining standards and systems for patient records. The primary responsibility of an informatician's job today is to create systems that are able to store and retrieve patient information at any given time."

Cognizant expects that healthcare informatics is going to be an integral part of the large KPO (knowledge process outsourcing) potential. India is set to emerge as a healthcare knowledge-outsourcing destination by 2010 and has the potential to become the hub for research and development activities, says Vinayambika.

Cognizant is "very bullish on the prospects and has built a strong team of over 3,000 professionals in the healthcare practice, working for clients across the healthcare spectrum," she asserts.

For technology requirements, Cognizant hires engineers or MCAs and provides them with the relevant domain knowledge. It also appoints experienced healthcare professionals who bring industry knowledge and expertise — such as doctors, pharmacists, clinicians, bio-informatics professionals, bio-statisticians and bio-medical professionals.

At iSoft, "we have a large global pool of healthcare experts. Under a well-defined knowledge transfer programme, we bring these professionals to India on a frequent basis to train the local pool of domain experts and software developers," says Kaliki.

Underlining the need for industry academia tie-ups, he says, "today only a handful of educational institutions in India offer courses on healthcare informatics and healthcare management. iSOFT is currently evaluating possible tie-ups with leading engineering institutes in India to develop a proper course module on healthcare informatics. This will improve the supply situation which the industry can harvest over the years."

Top picture by Johney Thomas

paromita@thehindu.co.in

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