The Hindu Business Line : Wired for wellness

In a bid to improve information flow, many healthcare providers have begun to invest in technologies such as online registration, electronic medical records, picture archiving, and communication systems.

These applications support care-giving within the hospital, rather than create an integrated network among physicians, health systems and ancillary services such as laboratories and pharmacies.

But healthcare providers are beginning to understand that to optimise delivery of services and control spending, they will need an integrated IT network that will help collaborate and communicate effectively.

Collaboration is all about uniting patients, caregivers, administration and families across the care continuum through the innovative use of data, voice and video, so people can communicate wherever they are, using any device whether wired or wireless.

But there are no standardised applications across healthcare industry. To improve patient care, applications need to follow industry guidelines and work flows. With no standard guideline, how can one expect improvement?

At your fingertips

“Virtualisation in healthcare technologies would help increase access to information — anytime, anywhere — and reduce the total cost of ownership. Medical architecture network integrates the whole technology,” says Kapil Khandelwal, Director, Healthcare and Life Sciences (APAC and Emerging Markets), Cisco Technologies.

And with traditional data, voice and video technologies getting redundant and expensive to sustain, we are witnessing convergence over wire/ wireless IP-based networks.

“Information technology will play a key role in this transformation. We have initiated discussion about the ‘connected hospital’ concept with a number of healthcare providers in India, working with partners and service providers,” says Khandelwal.

Meanwhile, governments and healthcare systems worldwide have initiated improvement programmes.

The Canada Health Infoway, for instance, is working to link clinics, hospitals, pharmacies and other points of care by accelerating the development of a pan-Canadian network of interoperable eHealth record solutions.

Arras Hospital in northern France introduced Cisco IP telephony and wireless capabilities across 18 sites, allowing staff to view, enter or amend data directly, from wherever they are.

This enables any member of the clinical staff to view the results of blood tests through mobile devices such as a PDA or tablet PC, reducing the time spent previously in finding the details or logging on to a terminal.

“Timely access to key information would help clinicians avoid errors and guide patients more efficiently. The Eastern Goldfields Medical Division of General Practice covers one-third of Western Australia. Because of the remoteness of the region, it was not only difficult to communicate to the patients, but was also infrequent and cumbersome. Our broadband IP network bridged the geographical divide with medical staff able to use secure email, access the Internet at broadband speeds and enjoy cheaper calls between sites,” Khandelwal explains.

He lists various solutions such as medical grade network, connected imaging, mobility for healthcare, mobile care, secure wireless, convergence of voice, data and video, health presence, virtual expert, intelligent pharmacy and Cisco’s Smart Connected Hospital solutions.

He finds growing awareness of the need for such technologies and says a lot of transformational work is required, especially from the customer’s point of view. “In fact, all innovations until now have been done from the point of view of outsourcing services. ‘Technology for the sake of technology’ is what is happening here. We need to strike the right balance towards virtualisation and convergence,” he says.

The Integrated Digital Hospital (IDH) programme is a joint initiative of Lenovo, Intel and Karishma, which aims to offer a comprehensive digital healthcare solution targeted at small and mid-sized hospitals in Coimbatore. As part of the IDH programme, Lenovo plans to deploy its ThinkStation range of high-end and powerful workstation PCs, ThinkPad range of notebook PCs and ThinkCentre range of desktops built on Intel’s technology platform, while Karishma will offer Jeeva, an ERP application, to the hospitals. Hospitals can derive a host of benefits from the IDH solution starting with lower costs and an integrated supply chain management. The solution calls for less paperwork and clear documentation, thereby making the process far more streamlined and quick. Moreover, it allows for quick access to patient information for prompt decision-making and problem resolution in the domain of treatment line, admission, diagnosis, order processing, result reporting and the discharge process. The end-to-end solution provides an intuitive interface to access patient medical records and financial details, while supporting international standards in documentation for disease diagnosis, procedures, data exchanges, images and EDI. It takes into account the interests of all the stakeholders involved such as patients, physicians, providers, regulators and managers. It also integrates and aggregates data from various locations, sources and systems. The solution enables access to administrative, financial and clinical information anytime, anywhere and in the format desired.

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