eHEALTH Magazine
VOLUME 11 / ISSUE 3 / MARCH 2016 / ` 75 / US $10 / ISSN 0973-8959
p 10
Ethical practices and transparency in billing is our USP Dr Nalla G Palaniswami Chairman
Kovai Medical Center & Hospital and Trustee, Kovai Medical Center Research & Educational Trust, Tamil Nadu
COVER STORY Healthcare Sector Glides on Tech Wings
p 16
FEATURING HEALTHCARE
PROFILES
p 24
The Mission Leaders of Health IT 2020
SPECIAL FEATURE Pharmaceutical Sector Gets Technology Push
p 62
AsiA’s first Monthly MAgAzine on the enterprise of heAlthcAre Volume 11
Issue 03
March 2016
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF: Dr Ravi Gupta MANAGING EDITOR: Raghav Mittal
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Contents
MARCH 2016 | VOLUME - 11 | ISSUE - 03
10 Special Interview
Driven by Vision of Healthier India Hailing from a peasant family and fighting odds out, r alla G Palaniswami, Founder & Chairman of the state-of-the-art multispecialty Kovai Medical Center & Hospital (KMCH), in an interaction with Elets ews etwork (E ), underlines that the primary focus of MCH is to provide quality and affordable healthcare, and elucidates the changing healthcare landscape in the country
16 Cover Story
Healthcare Glides on Tech Wings Technological innovations are taking place with a significant growth, changing the shape of various industries as these evolve. Technology plays a pivotal role in all processes, starting from registration of patients to data monitoring, from lab tests to self-care tools in the healthcare domain
62 Special Feature
Pharma Sector Gets Tech Push The pharmaceutical industry has realised the need to move up the IT scale and the implementation goes on at a never-before pace. Automation of all hitherto manual operations is adding speed to the overall functioning of the sector
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INDUSTRY PROFILE
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24 25 26 27
Fortis Healthcare
28 30
Jaypee Hospital
31 32
BLK Super Speciality Hospital
33 34 36
Sir Ganga Ram Hospital
54
Apollo Hospitals Regency Healthcare Kokilaben Dhirubhai Ambani Hospital Jaslok Hospital & Research Centre
EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW
54
Gyanesh Pandey, Chairman & Managing Director, HSCC (India) Ltd
Rajiv Gandhi Cancer Institute & Research Centre
56
Action Cancer Hospital Asian Institute of Medical Sciences
37
Bhagwan Mahaveer Cancer Hospital & Research Centre
38 39 40 41 42 43 44
MEDICA Superspecialty Hospital
45 46 47 48
Paras Hospital
Sunshine Global Hospitals Max Hospital
HSCC’s Journey Continues for Restructuring Health Infrastructure
‘Patient Centricity’ as Driver of Health Industry Shubhanshu Joshi, Joint MD & CEO, Life Science Vision Group
58
Trivector Gets First Mover Advantage Dilip Patil, Managing Partner, Trivector Biomed LLP
SPOTLIGHT
60
SevenHills Hospital, Mumbai SAL Hospital & Medical Institute
Connecting Advanced Medical Technologies to Patients
Tony Semedo, Senior Vice President, Medtronic & President, Aortic & Peripheral Vascular, Medtronic
Saket City Hospital Pushpawati Singhania Research Institute Wockhardt Hospital Artemis Hospital P D Hinduja Hospital & Medical Research Centre
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Mahatma Gandhi University of Medical Science & Technology
50 52
Dr Lal Path Labs Philips Innovation Campus
MARCH / 2016 ehealth.eletsonline.com
INDUSTRY SPEAK
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Adopt IT for Care and Cure Ramakant Desai, CEO, Curespring
STARTUP
65 66
Genomics Turns New Paradigm in Healthcare On Pricing Transparency Quest in Healthcare
editorial
Healthcare on Tech-Wheels With Information Technology playing a crucial role in the evolution of industries across the spectrum, healthcare sector has also embraced it whole heartedly – to its own advantage and to the advantage of healthcare seekers at large. Increasing penetration of IT in healthcare service delivery has yielded positive outcomes in terms of reduced costs, enhanced efficiency, interoperability of existing fragmented hospital systems and increased health awareness among the masses. Although technology in the healthcare outlets has been there since early 90s, hospitals then would have just a small department for doing mundane things, such as billing and printing of medical reports, patient administration, purchases, finance, inventory management, etc. However, it was during those very days that the initial versions of today’s advanced Hospital Information System (HIS) were born. Towards the end of year 2000, major hospitals had HIS system to manage patient and employee data, material, lab and radiology, revenue and expenses, accounting, billing, etc. Later, within four to five years, Electronic Health Record (EHR) and Picture Archival & Communication System (PACS) were the two major developments that took place. EHR revolutionised the paperless patient records by automating them, while PACS helped patients and doctors by storing X-Ray, CT-scan, MRI images digitally. By 2010, IT emerged as the core infrastructure for healthcare delivery, and over the past a few years, fast changing medical technology and availability of various technological diagnostic and therapeutic devices have completely revolutionised the way healthcare is delivered. Increased adoption of telemedicine, HIS, electronic health records, mHealth and web-based services are going to only expand the digital patient data, necessitating deployment of robust IT infrastructure in the Indian healthcare organisations. In this backdrop, it is no surprise that India’s health-tech market is predicted to touch US$196 billion-mark by 2018. The figure looks all the more realistic in view of the Government’s thrust on ‘Healthcare for All by 2020’. This issue of eHealth presents a complete overview of the rapidly increasing convergence of IT and healthcare. Players in the domain speak on how this convergence can be translated into a huge opportunity for providers to improve the patient experience and operate more efficiently through augmented association and information sharing among themselves. Besides, the February issue of the magazine also carries a section dedicated to profiles of various hospitals, with a focus on IT implementation there. A number of CIOs speak about the role technology is playing in their respective healthcare outlets. In our mission to showcase the latest and the best in the health-tech sector, we look forward to your continued support and guidance.
Dr Ravi Gupta ravi.gupta@elets.in MARCH / 2016 ehealth.eletsonline.com
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Special Interview
Driven by Vision of Healthier India Hailing from a peasant family and fighting odds out, Dr Nalla G Palaniswami, Founder & Chairman of the state-of-the-art multispecialty Kovai Medical Center & Hospital (KMCH), in an interaction with Elets News Network (ENN), underlines that the primary focus of KMCH is to provide quality and affordable healthcare, and elucidates the changing healthcare landscape in the country
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Can you recount the 25-year medical journey of KMCH under your leadership for us? My vision was to provide the best medical care to the Indian population with quality, technology and systems at par with any other developed nation. Now, I can proudly say that KMCH can handle any medical case to bring best clinical outcomes. Since the beginning, I have given prominence to each and every criterion, right from selection of best staff, world-class equipment and following the ethical practice. This has helped the hospital grow. It started off in 1990 with 150 beds, and now KMCH has reached the capacity of 1,000 beds in the main centre and 325 beds in peripheral centers. This could happen only on account of the hard and sincere contribution of my team in the past 25 years; over 100 staff members have worked with us
Special Interview
all these years. In this dynamic industry, having such a dedicated team is a great asset to an organisation.
How have you seen healthcare in the country evolve? Indian healthcare is evolving in the right direction. Although there are gaps in our delivery system, we have immense potential to grow. Continuous rise in the premium volumes of insurance companies shows that awareness about proper healthcare is growing fast in India. The medical tourism sector is growing as the number of foreigners travelling for medical purposes is spiralling every year. For quicker, accurate and cost-efficient transactions, IT technology is used very intensively in India; hospitals want to deliver services better and faster. The increasing accreditation activity by many healthcare institutions suggests that the focus of the domain is more patient-centric and is yielding better results. India is going to be one of the best healthcare destinations in future.
What are the areas of operation that KMCH has presence in and
KMCH started off in 1990 with 150 beds, and now it has reached the capacity of 1,000 beds in the main centre and 325 beds in peripheral centers. This could happen only on account of the hard and sincere contribution of my team in the past 25 years‌ where it sees opportunities of growth?
What makes KMCH stand apart from the rest in the industry?
KMCH is a corporate hospital with 7,000 shareholders. We do all transplant surgeries like kidney, liver, heart, lung and bone marrow. Our success rate is very high compared to the industry norms. We give focused attention to our patients and specialise in Neuro, Cardio, Ortho and OBG-related treatments. Our ICUs have 95-100 per cent occupancy, mainly referred from other nursing homes and hospitals. Our interventional radiology is one of the best and successful models in the country. We plan to start robotic surgery and neuro navigation procedures shortly. Even now we have ample grow opportunity as the demand for patient rooms are mostly unmet.
Our ethical practices and transparency in billing makes our patients pose more faith in us. We have a dedicated quality department led by a professional doctor as Director-Quality. We also have a team that ensures the patients get quality service at each stage. We offer international quality services at an affordable cost. We don’t compromise on the quality, technology updates, and we can serve all strata of population.
You established the Kovai Medical Center Research and Educational Trust (KMCRET) way back in 1990. How do you see the future of medical education in the country? Medical education in the country
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Special Interview
from the society. We have built 75 toilets to improve the sanitary conditions at a cost of one crore last year.
What are the policy interventions that the healthcare sector in Tamil Nadu needs to align with the healthcare objectives at the national level?
always needs to expand to meet the shortfall. India needs 1.5 million doctors and 2-4 million nurses by 2025. Nursing and paramedical courses like Occupational Therapy is always in great demand. Many of our students are well placed not only in India but in many countries like the US, the UK and Gulf. We are also planning to start a medical college.
How does the group aim to contribute and achieve the aim of ‘Healthcare for All’?
‘Healthcare for All’ is a much-needed concept for India and can be implemented, provided there is substantial support from the Central Government in terms of fund allocation and other infrastructure requirements. As part of CSR activity, we have undertaken many social projects. We have adopted some villages and try to meet the health needs of the population by conducting medical camps, screening programmes for breast cancer, testing of prevalence of diabetes without any financial benefit
KMCH Milestones 1990: 1992: 2002: 2005: 2007: 2011: 2011: 2012: 2012: 2012: 2014: 2014: 2014: 2015: 2015: 2015: 2016: 2016:
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Inauguration of Kovai Medical Center and Hospital Inauguration of KMCH City Center Inauguration of KMCH Erode Center Steroid free kidney transplant started for the first time in ountry Inauguration of KMCH Speciality Hospital Erode Inauguration of KMCH Comprehensive Cancer Center Commissioning of Whole body PET scanner with a diagnostic 6 slice CT scanner A H Accreditation for M H for the first time “Best Hospital Award” Non Metro South India Category for the year Stem Cell Transplantation for Thalassaemia was done for the first time in this region “NABH” Accreditation for KMCH for the second time Heart Transplant Performed at KMCH for the first time in Western Tamil adu Liver Transplant performed at KMCH for the first time in Western Tamil adu Won India Healthcare Awards 2014 jointly the category “Best Multi-Specialty Hospital Award” - Non Metro South India for the second tim Healthcare Excellence in Nursing Award for the year Inauguration of KMCH Sulur Hospital FICCI’s Award “Best Hospital in Tamil Nadu” “Green Hospital Award” by Association of Healthcare Providers (India) (AHPI)
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Tamil Nadu is one of the states faring well in health delivery system. A commitment to improve the health and wellbeing of the citizens by allocating more funds and infrastructure, and greater focus on preventive and productive healthcare is needed. There is a scope to improve sanitary conditions in certain pockets of the state. Village health sanitation and nutrition committee and its urban equivalents must be strengthened and utilised in a better manner. At present, the healthcare sector accounts for 4.1 per cent of GDP. In this, public spending is only one per cent. Nearly 75 per cent of patients are treated by private sector. To serve larger number of people, governments should spend more on public sector healthcare outlets.
How important is the national Skill India Mission? Do you think it will help healthcare sector? To build a better India, developing skill should be our mission. To align with this mission, we have a separate training cell to upgrade the existing workforce and disseminate knowledge to new ones. KMCH conducts Continuing Medical Education Programme (CMEP) meeting at least once in a week on specialties. We encourage our doctors and staff to conduct and attend skill developing conferences and programmes. One of the projects in the pipeline is a full-fledged library and separate allied healthcare training programmes in various areas of hospital functions in like OT technology, Radiology, ER Tech etc.
Profile
Devoted to the Cause of Healthcare
D
r Nalla G Palaniswami—a Doctor, Educationist and Philanthropist—was born on March 15, 1941 in a small village called Nallampatti, in Erode district to ThiruNalla Gounder and Ilayammal, in the agricultural family of eight children. He is the only one in his family who went for education. After studying in Nallampatti Elementary School and Board High School, Perundurai, he joined P S G Arts & Science College in Coimbatore and then went to Stanley Medical College at Madras (Chennai) in 1961. Dr Palaniswami did MBBS and MD from the same college between 1961 and 1972 and later served as a Lecturer of Medicine at Coimbatore Medical College in the year 1973 – 1975. After his father’s demise, Dr Palaniswami went to the USA in May 1975 for higher studies in Medicine. He completed higher training in Internal Medicine at Cincinnati, Ohio and Wayne State University at Detroit, Michigan, USA during 19751978. He undertook fellowship in Endocrinology and Metabolism at Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan during 1983-1985. He worked as internist at St. Joseph Hospital, Mt. Clements, Michigan, USA in the year 1978–1983. He also served the Department of Hypertension, Obesity and Risk Factor, Wayne State University at Detroit, Michigan, USA during 1985-1990.
Health Services Having conceived the idea of establishing a hospital in India at par with the US hospitals, Dr Palaniswami began working on the project of Kovai Medical Center & Hospital at Coimbatore in 1985. KMCH was established and started functioning from June 1990 with the help of NRI’s from the USA, the UK, Australia, Middle East and people from India. KMCH is serving the community
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Dr Nalla G Palaniswami Chairman Kovai Medical Center & Hospital and Trustee, Kovai Medical Centre Research & Educational Trust, Tamil Nadu with dedication and commitment for past two-and-a-half decades. Starting with 200 beds, the hospital is now 750bed super specialty hospital and offering treatment of all kinds of medical ailments under one roof. It has recently added 200-bed advanced cancer treatment facility.
Educational Services Good health and education are vital needs of the nation. To give a good health services requires good trained paramedical people. To achieve the goal, KMCH started paramedical colleges. Subsequently, for a good citizenship and education, other educational institutions were also started. The institutions are: l KMCH College of Nursing l KMCH College of Physiotherapy l KMCH College of Occupational Therapy l KMCH College of Pharmacy l Dr NGP Arts & Science College l Dr NGP College of Education l Dr NGP Teacher Training Institute
l l l
Dr NGP Institute of Technology KMCH Institute of Health Sciences THE NGP School
Service to Community KMCH has set up community rural and women centers to serve the poor and needy in association with Rotary Clubs and St. John service organisations. KMCH has also established trauma centres and first aid centers in oimbatore and Erode. In the USA, Dr Palaniswami as a Director of Tamil Nadu Foundation started the Rural Health and Sanitation programme and for Tamil Nadu he has established a model sanitary programme at Naduvalasu – Nallampatti village in Erode. He has also built a school building worth Rs 1 crore for the Government Higher Secondary School at Nallampatti in Erode district. He has helped building toilets in several schools. Dr Palaniswami has helped renovate temples, especially for the Dalit, in Coimbatore and Erode villages. To train the villagers and make them familiar with sanitation habit, he has established model latrines and model education programme to use foot wares and inculcate cleanliness among the villagers. KMCH group is also offering scholarships to the students of schools at Nallampatti and Perundurai since 1977. Many students are being given free education and scholarships in various educational institutions. In the name of Kalapatti Nalam Arakattalai, Athma crematorium has been established at a cost of Rs 3 crore in Kalapatti village and functioning since 2014.
Health Mission Dr Palaniswami’s mission is to serve the people of India in the realm of health care. To serve the people with cancer, comprehensive cancer center was established in the year 2012. Now he devotes his attention to poor women with cancer. Creating awareness about cancer among the public is his goal.
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Cover Story
Healthcare Glides on Tech Wings Technological innovations are taking place with a significant growth, changing the shape of various industries as these evolve. Technology plays a pivotal role in all processes, starting from registration of patients to data monitoring, from lab tests to self-care tools in the healthcare domain. Romiya Das of Elets News Network (ENN) finds out how the use of information technology is transforming the way healthcare is being delivered to the patients
H
ospitals are adopting IT fast and replacing the conventional methods of monitoring and recording systems. ow, people can avail the facility of consulting doctors from the comfort of their homes. Advancements in healthcare technology has contributed immensely to taking medical facilities out of the hospital periphery and integrating those with easyto-use devices, thus enhancing the
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accessibility to healthcare services. oing back to s, hospitals used to have a small department that did mundane things such as billing and printing of medical reports, patient administration, purchase, finance, inventory management, etc. uring those days, the earlier versions of Hospital Information System (HIS) took shape in the form of in-house IT systems. However, with the turn of the century, these applications started surfacing as
standard products being configured and implemented as per specific requirements of the hospitals. It also added lab and radiology reporting workflow, integrating lab analysers with HIS, booking appointment and many more. Towards the end of s, ma or hospitals had HIS system to manage patient data, employee data, material, lab and radiology, revenue and expenses, accounting, billing, etc. ater, within four to five years,
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Our vision is to enable Specialist Doctors & Hospitals extend Specialist care to remote patients using Technology
Cover Story
Electronic Health Record (EHR) and Picture Archival ommunication System (PA S) were the two ma or developments that took place. EHR revolutionised the paperless patient records by automating them, while PA S helped patients and doctors by storing -Ray, T-scan, MRI images digitally. The year saw information technology emerging as the core infrastructure for healthcare delivery. Ever since, IT has evolved and benefitted hospitals making it an integral part of the service delivery system in hospitals. Some of the ma or developments include Management and Analysis of Big Data: Analysis of linical Research ata, and eneration and Storage of iometric ata, like Fingerprints, enetic Information, etc., have become possible through continuous advancements in IT. Cloud Computing: Through loud omputing, it has been possible to share infrastructure in which large pools of systems, such as data storage space, networks, computer
processing power and specialised corporate or user applications, can be linked together and users have the freedom to access information from anywhere at any time. Enterprise collaboration, storage of EHRs and others have hence become easier. Electronic Health Records (EHR): EHRs have made it possible
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to integrate text, voice, images and handwritten notes. Real-time access to patient data, reduction of time to enter patient data, reduction in cost and space for storage of data are the benefits of EHR. Radiology Information Software (RIS) and Picture Archiving
printed advice (the proverbial doctor’s bad handwriting on prescriptions), EMR, follow-ups with consultations through video or telecon or email, or applications to keep them connected, remote diagnosis and patient feedback system, among others, says Ashok
Although IT requires high initial investments, it makes healthcare more affordable from the patients’ point of view. For instance, tele-consultation cuts down unnecessary travels. Patient portals enable the patients to access their medical reports at home rather than making visits to hospitals &
Communication System (PACS): RIS and PA S revolutionhave revolution manageised the manage ment of medical imagery associated data. It has enabled long-term cost savings muland simultaneous mul ti-location viewing of images. TelemHealth and Tele medicine: se of mobile communication devices serto deliver health ser vices to patients dehas ensured de livery of timely and efficient health services benefitand has benefit ted rural parts of the country immensely. Information technology has significantly improved three crucial facets of healthcare delivery outcome, affordability and accessibility. Every aspect of medical and healthcare is getting automated for patient’s delight. asic things, such as appointments and billings, are a no-brainer, but more importantly,
ain, Founder of ifespan. Across the globe most of the healthcare providers have harnessed IT adoption for business visibility. IT-enabled healthcare has improved the services in many ways. It reduces manual errors during diagnosis and treatment. A study conducted by Infoholic Research, IoT Healthcare Market lobal Trends and Forecast states that the Internet of Things (IoT) solutions will have a positive impact on healthcare services and that government spending on healthcare delivery will improve. The IoT market is expected to grow at A R of . per cent for the period of , according to the study. The new era of technological shift began with digital transformation of communication, which has completely changed the way doctors and patients used to communicate earlier. Although Indian healthcare spending is estimated to reach S billion-mark by , the sector is lagging behind in full exploitation of technological tools; deployment of IT systems has been happening at a slower pace compared to the countries in the West. However, Healthcare Information
Cover Story
Technology (HIT) and HIS are used by big pharmaceutical companies, corporate hospitals and other private health sectors. Health insurance firms have also made adequate IT deployment for collecting, analysing and transferring information when needed. Lifestyle-related chronic diseases are resulting from urbanisation, sedentary lifestyles, changing diets, rising obesity levels, and widespread availability of tobacco products. In addition, India has one of the world’s highest numbers of diabetes sufferers, at more than million individuals. This trend has resulted in mushrooming of super-specialty hospitals to combat lifestyle diseases. The technological advancements in healthcare analytics, informatics, telemedicine, remote diagnostic and therapeutic tools have changed the face of healthcare into techenabled healthcare. Improved IT infrastructure for healthcare organisations will directly result in providing quicker, simpler and more efficient healthcare services. Also, focusing more on patients, who will now have direct access to many innovative applications, by smart devices is digitalising the perception of patients and taking a leap towards modern forms of best treatments and clinical expertise, opines R Sreenivasan, Founder irector at Infoholic Research. Tariq Ahmed Shaik from Research Operations at Infoholic Research said, Healthcare sector is dominated by private sector, comprising individual or group of doctors running clinics or nursing homes trusts etc. The various models of hospitals have been benefited a lot with the introduction of various technologies and applications, such as HIS, ERP, PA S, EHR, Telehealth, mHealth, and web-based services. Enabling these robust technologies in hospitals has resulted in efficient management of patient records, as this is the key
task for every hospital both in rural and urban areas. This also helps in prioritising the records and making it readily accessible, as patient’s visit is unpredictable can happen the next day, in weeks or maybe after years. With increased adoption of these tech-savvy applications patients are digitally connected to the hospitals and respective doctors and increasingly demanding deployment of robust IT infrastructure in the upcoming hospitals. Information technology will revolutionise the hospitals with more digital trends in healthcare information and electronic medical records. Technically, IT will benefit
their convenience. Online Availability of Diagnostic Reports: Hospitals have made the availability of all diagnostic reports online. Patients can now check their reports at their homes and make a print whenever needed. This has reduced the TAT of the diagnostic departments and made it convenient for the patients. Mobile or Health Application: These have enabled patients to monitor their health regularly. Post discharge, patients can now monitor their progress and also share the same with the doctors from the convenience of their home. Patient Engagement Pro-
hospitals, doctors and patients in more digitised formats to get them connected with ease and urgencies. IT is being used across hospitals to enhance the patient experience and deliver services efficiently. Some of the innovative use of information technology for patient’s delight include Patient Portal: Hospitals design exclusive patient portals to enhance the patient experience. Features, such as digital self-scheduling or online appointment booking and billing, are being used by hospitals to reduce long waiting time and queues. Patients can now check, doctor schedules and availability online and schedule their visits as per
grammes: Online patient engagement programmes are helping patients gain more knowledge on their health conditions and also learn ways to be healthier. These have also increased efficient Patient Doctor Interaction. Smart Card: Hospitals are issuing value or smart cards to their patients to ensure that they can avail additional benefits in all services. Queue Management: These systems have enhanced the patient experience in the Hospital and reduced the workload of the OPD Staff. Modular OT and Robotic Surgeries: High Precision Surgeries are now possible with robotic arms
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Cover Story
used in T. This has improved the clinical outcomes and reduced the recovery time for patients. Telemedicine: This has enabled patients to seek consultation from any location and is also immensely helping delivery of services in rural areas. IT has grown into managing the way hospitals and clinics operate and serve. It helps in performance enhancement with new methods of patient management and RM systems. Availing health records at the click of a button is
patients to access their medical reports at home rather than making visits to hospitals. These are direct cost savings and thus make treatment affordable. ustomer satisfaction is the key, and merit the benchmark for any service provider. The healthcare service providers do realise that, but in most cases, it is not pre-emptive. The healthcare insurance side of medicine is yet to unlock the real potential of IT, and the research and innovation that is en oyed by the medical equipment and pharmaceutical counterparts.
in an electronic form, etc., which all help to keep information handy and enable access on the go. Furthermore, technology implementation, such as self-help kiosks and information monitors help reduce the dependence on the insurance desk and gives the policyholder the access to information as and when they need. However, a lot more needs to be done to ensure that patients are not made to run from department to department for information and also reduce the long waiting hours that are still the norm, says aga adding that despite all technology implementations, a policyholder’s representative still has to wait in queues and fill forms, and approach insurance desks every time they need an update on claim status.
Challenges for Hospitals
a boon to individuals who need to access healthcare anytime, anywhere. Hospitals and clinics are moving from hand records and bills to consolidated data using RM systems. This makes every data available to different departments of the hospital. etworking of systems across individual departments of the hospital makes it easy for transfers internally and other doctors in the system know what was done earlier within the setup. A unique patient I is all it takes to access them, says r Sitaram Sundaresan, Physio eFit. Although IT requires high initial investments, it makes healthcare more affordable from the patients’ point of view. For instance, teleconsultation cuts down unnecessary travels. Patient portals enable the
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Parallel to the proposition for a universal health insurance cover, technology should be a key discussion point, as it would be the pillar on which . billion Indians would be insured and protected against out-of-pocket expenditures. Thus, progressive steps need to be taken in a direction that allows development and implementation of innovative technology solutions that can take the entire process of claim settlement online and ensure a hassle-free experience for the policyholder. Munish aga, Remedinet Technologies E , says, Hospitals are doing a lot to enable a great patient experience, such as using tablets and kiosks, T monitors, token systems, accessing information
Adoption of IT and new technologies is a ma or challenge, and key factors contributing to the same are as follows: Doctor and Staff Reluctance: Adoption of new technologies is time consuming, and acceptance from all end-users is necessary for effective implementation. Since, hospitals are driven by huge manpower, acceptance is a key challenge. Effective Training and Implementation: Training and implementation of such systems is also time-consuming. Costing: Implementation of IT initiatives requires huge investments and the RoI on them takes a longer time. Hence, investments need to be made by keeping in mind the goals and ob ectives of the system clearly. Lack of Information: A lack of detailed, neutral information about technologies leaves hospital administrators poorly prepared to fend off physician of undesirable technologies or to advance beneficial technologies. Security and Privacy: Maintaining data privacy is also a
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ma or challenge. Maintaining Patient Health Records in an efficient way is also a challenge in adoption of digitisation systems. Data Management and Transmission: Digitisation of healthcare has led to the massive collection of data. As healthcare becomes more dependent on this data, the storage, protection, back-up and recovery of the data is critical. Product Interoperability: Interoperability of new health IT products with existing technology (out-patient EHRs, PA S, financial, or administrative systems) through product integration or interfaces is essential to maximi e the utility of the systems themselves. Setting up IT Systems in Rural Areas: Setting up small, rural hospitals face significant challenges relating to the short and long-term costs of EHR investment. As hospitals are spending on health IT, revenues are decreasing due to patients shifting to the outpatient setting. As the health insurance industry is only beginning to implement technology solutions to streamline the claims exchange process, one needs to understand the unique financial, structural and human resources that affect the successful implementation of IT. Secondly, the depth and breadth of challenges faced by large chain
hospitals as opposed to smaller hospitals may require a different set of strategies. When it comes to addressing change management, implementing technology solutions at hospitals requires innovative and creative solutions that will work within the institution’s framework and culture. For a change that requires a significant shift in habit, strong leadership, shared expectations and
the hospital operations in both small and medium hospitals are managed by using IT applications. There is a need to rise up the user expectations by the application provider. The health and the I T scenario follows the growing divide between the advanced and emerging economies can be bridged by adopting ehealth. Mahesh Shinde, irector - IT, P Hindu a Hospital Medical Research entre, told Elets ews etwork
Over the years, a dramatic change in perception has been seen where acceptance for leveraging IT came in non-medical areas first. But today, the hospital operations in both small and medium hospitals are managed by using IT applications collaboration from all departments, and buy-in from multiple key stakeholders is a must. While there is no way to eliminate all challenges, employing these strategies based on hospital experiences can help others in the ecosystem to follow the suit as well.
Paradigm Shift ver the years, a dramatic change in perception has been seen where acceptance for leveraging IT came in non-medical areas first. ut today,
(E ) about their hospital’s IT investments Online Payments and Kiosks: The hospital has an online platform for patients, wherein after booking an appointment, patients can make a payment for the same online and when they come to the hospital, they can print the voucher through the kiosks which are placed on the OPD floors. This has enabled patients to save time and reduce queues. Online Reports: Diagnostic reports have been made available online for the patients. Patients can now access the reports at their convenience and print a copy. Online Feedback: Hospital has implemented an online portal for patients to provide feedback. PACS: The Picture Archiving ommunication System has been implemented in the Hospital, which has enabled the access to medical images across the Hospital, thus reducing the dependency on physical films. HIMS Integrated with LIMS: Health Information Management System (HIMS) at Hindu a Hospital is a well-integrated system of over
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modules. ver the years, it has undergone heavy customisation to suit changes in business process. The hospital is in process of implementing an integrated web-based HIMS with additional modules, so as to deliver real conceivable benefits to the hospital. Blood Bank Software: This has been implemented to streamline the process flow in the blood bank department and automate the management and tracking of the entire blood transfusion cycle - from product receipt to compatibility verification to patient transfusion.
ware): This has been implemented for online booking of Meeting Rooms within the Hospital which has enabled in efficient management of Manpower Time. Smart Card: The Hospital is in the process of implementation of smart card or value cards for its regular patients, which will help the patients to avail services at a discounted rate and also accumulate and redeem value points on their visit to the Hospital. EMR/Mobile Application: Hindu a Hospital is also in the finalisation stage for implementing EMR Software and designing a mobile
e-MRD/Document Imaging: This is an initiative to minimise the medical record folder movement within the Hospital. All Patient records have been scanned and uploaded, thus enabling Online viewing of Patient Records and has reduced the workload of file movement for MR . e or o This is an initiative taken to eliminate use of paper for few administrative processes. This has been implemented across all departments of the Hospital. e-Facility (room booking soft-
application for doctors and patients to completely digitise patient record generation and improve the patient experience. Speech to Text & Digital Signature: The speech to text conversion and digital signature system has been enabled for Radiology epartment, which has reduced the TAT for generation of these reports. Quality Management Software: Hindu a is also implementing a uality Management Software for
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efficient evaluation of Performance Indicators, Audits and Accreditation related activities across the Hospital. e-I or Electronic Intensive are nit is one the most innovative models on the advancement of the communication technology in the last two years. Big hospitals with large chains in the country, such as Apollo and Fortis, have opted e-I facility and expanding their network to scale up their operations.
The Way Forward There is no doubt that technology that can make accessibility to healthcare services possible at the click of a few buttons and at an affordable price is the technology that will set the trend. That technology is going to be a mobile phone, which has already set the trend in other sectors. It is a device that revolutionised the way people communicated previously. Today, it has changed the way we transact, transfer funds, buy and sell online, and travel as well. Thus, making it possible to access any kind of service in real-time and changing the way we interact with the world around us. A mobile device in this context can be the medium that can enable, not ust access to health insurance policy-related information but also enable utilisation of the policy at any healthcare center. This will be the real game-changer in health insurance where the consumer can access health insurance as easily as sending an SMS. For making I T effective in healthcare there should be an increase in the use of EMR and HER, so that these tools are used for drawing inferences using various information systems. To develop awareness among people to use I T more promotions should be done, both by the government and the hospitals. Technology is increasing the access to specialised healthcare for those who can afford it.
Industry Profile
Fortis Healthcare Name Veneeth Purushotaman Designation CIO Organisation Fortis Healthcare Limited, Gurgaon Website www.fortishealthcare.com
Transforming Medical Infrastructure
T
echnology has evolved over the past two decades to play role in the clinical side of the hospital systems from being a mere billing system. There is an increasing conjunction between healthcare and information technology in the Indian market. This has also been manifested in a recent report by Frost & Sullivan which has pegged India’s healthcare information technology market to reach S . billion by . This gives the healthcare sector the flexibility and efficiency to improve patient experience and reduce operational cost.
Tech for Care Delivery
A ourney to have a single standard system across our hospitals to ensure consistent and common patient experience. Once completed, we will be able to take care of the patients in any of our hospitals irrespective of where they were originally registered.
Connecting Healthcare via IT
IT has tremendously changed the way healthcare is now delivered, whether it is technology usage to support critical patients remotely or making critical investigation data available to doctors over the Internet. There have been several such areas where technology has efficiently contributed to patient care. Technology lays down the foundation for the industry to standardize the processes and thereby allows scalability and nimbleness. We use technology to enable our employees to serve our patients better. I believe innovation is not just about technology; technology innovations have to be strategically driven and encouraged within the organisation.
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IT Investments
We continue to invest heavily in technology and standardisation of processes as we believe it is critical for our growth and our patient-centric goals. We have initiatives like riti ext that allows our experts to relay intensive care beyond boundaries.’ ur flagship hospital, Fortis Memorial Research Institute (FMRI), has been ranked at number two in a worldwide survey. Project F1, the company’s initiative to enable a robust decision support system and deliver a common, scalable and replicable platform for different departments is being rolled out. Digital prescription solution was implemented in the out-patient departments and we implemented a central Vendor Neutral Archive (VNA) at all hospitals.
Shift in Perception
The perception is driven by the larger change in the ecosystem and with more and more tech savvy users in your organisations, adoption is getting better every day. There is no denying that application of cutting edge technology helps in bringing efficiency and economies of scale. Today, both non-medical and medical professional understand the importance of technology in order to provide better patient care and clinical excellence. People are more receptive towards technology and its application in the healthcare spectrum. The future looks bright and we will see technology becoming a critical factor in driving the competitive edge across hospitals in India. Mobility and Cloud adoption will become a norm and will open new exciting frontiers for the sector in the days to come.
Industry Profile
Apollo Hospitals Name Arvind Sivaramakrishnan Designation CIO Organisation Apollo Hospitals Enterprise Limited, Chennai Website www.apollohospitals.com
Transforming Medical Infrastructure
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he last two decades has seen phenomenal growth in the health IT sector. At the same time, the growth of the medical technologies have also been very impressive. The medical technology has greatly assisted in driving clinical excellence with higher levels of successful clinical outcomes, patient safety and quality outcomes. Clearly this state has led to a very effective partnership between medical infrastructure and IT. It has evolved to become a critical success factor in effective delivery of healthcare and manage the operational efficiency of a healthcare enterprise. Indian clinical outcomes are ranked the best across the world. IT is playing a crucial role in augmenting great clinical outcomes coupled with effective and seamless management of the overall care continuum. The level of adoption of IT in the healthcare sector with the various stakeholders has greatly increased. While there is indeed a lot more to achieve in this direction, the momentum is in the right direction of sustainable growth.
Connecting Healthcare via IT
IT has been a key element in our strategic plans. Our leadership realised the importance of IT in healthcare delivery right from the inception of our group 30 years ago. We have always made the required investments into our IT enablement and are delighted to see the favorable results. We are able to use IT to ensure effective clinical, operational, service and financial integration across our hospitals. Our IT enabled process es help ensure that we maintain the highest levels of quality and safety in our patient care process. The IT systems contribute positively towards optimising our operations and constantly ensure management of high levels of operational excellence.
IT Investments
As mentioned earlier, IT has been part of our stra strategic agenda right from our inception. Our organisation has been the pioneer in investing in medical technologies and brining the best to India. ur investment in an efficient HIS with seamless care continuity across hospitals has given us significant benefit. We are able to establish a single UHID across our systems which greatly boosts continuity of care across patient care setting. We also invested in the clinical imaging solutions which is now on a robust cloud platform giving us advantages of effective and seamless integration of clinical imaging at point of care and high availability including secure anytime-anywhere access to clinicians. Our investment in PHR has been very successful too.
Shift in Perception
Data integration has helped the clinician’s user experience. It greatly helps ensure that clinicians get the complete and comprehensive health record. This enables them get a good perspective of the state of health of the patient and any other related conditions that could be relevant to the current care process. It shortens the speed to diagnosis when comprehensive clinical information is at the fingertips of our clinicians.Today’s users clearly demand state-of-the-art integrated systems. Their comprehension of systems and their value to workflow is mature. While initial change management hurdles continue to exist, on a macro level the users greatly contribute as a positive driving force towards implementation and adoption of effective IT systems.
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Industry Profile
Regency Healthcare Name Gunjan Kumar Designation CIO & Head - New Initiatives Organisation Regency Healthcare, Kanpur Website www.regencyhealthcare.in
Enhancing Medical Ecosystem with IT
M
ost of the organisations around the world have envisaged business visibility through adoption of information technology (IT) and have gone to the extent of restructuring and re-aligning their operations around new-age technologies. The healthcare sector may be lagging behind in IT adoption initially, but since a decade or so there has been a phenomenal spurt in IT spending by healthcare organisations and in due course of time they have experienced its benefits as well. Hospitals have realised that technology has become ubiquitous thus evading it will impede organisational growth. Progressive healthcare organisations have re-aligned them with the healthcare information technology ecosystem, and have made it an integral part of medical infrastructure. To reap real benefits of IT, information and communication technology systems need to be thought of as one of the firsts in the planning phase of a modern healthcare setup. Many hospitals believe that IT is mostly to do with Hospital Information System (HIS/HMS) or streamlining the billing and financial system it is the new-age modern healthcare organisations that have started thinking much more comprehensively. A new perspective to IT in modern healthcare organisations is to bring along almost all the different healthcare services together and integrate through technology, thus maximising their potential and making them part of integrated healthcare IT delivery system. y leveraging on IT, healthcare organisations can rapidly achieve enhanced operational efficiencies, improved quality of services, improved clinical outcomes, organisational growth and cost controls.
Leveraging Technology
Synchronised integrated healthcare delivery systems have resulted in better clinical data management and consistent clinical information across the healthcare enterprise. Healthcare IT systems and associated technological innovations in medical equipment and devices offer a wide range of benefits to healthcare organisations by helping clinicians and staff, work more efficiently and smartly, thus delivering quality care to patients and improved clinical outcomes and enhanced safety.
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Shift in Perception
Yes, certainly it is the ease of accessibility of information, intuitiveness of the system, consistency of user interface and mobility features (i.e. availability of hospital applications across various platforms such as tablets and mobile phones) that has contributed to increased acceptability and change in perception amongst hospital users viz-a-viz IT applications.
Innovating Technology
It is the intent and creativity that translates into strategy, which drives innovation. There will always be some or the other native platform or technology available to push through innovation if there is intent, creativity and motivation.
Industry Profile
Kokilaben Dhirubhai Ambani Hospital Name Rajesh Batra Designation VP & CIO Organisation Kokilaben Dhirubhai Ambani Hospital, Mumbai Website www.kokilabenhospital.com
Transforming Medical Infrastructure
I
T infrastructure has evolved in healthcare along with the industry. There has been an upswing in technology adoption in the health domain. Today, any modern and decent sized hospital is completely dependent on IT for patient care. IT infrastructure has integrated pathology analysers to radiology devices to capture images on PACS and provide access to research sites for medical practitioner’s continuous learning. The hospitals also have a large network to support a mid-size contact or call center, as it not only supports data, images, video and voice, and not just the usual suspects of HIS, ERP, and Internet.
Leveraging Technology
Healthcare industry like enterprises is a robust industry and recognises the power of data and analytics. The data is used for furthering medical research to identifying research candidates to analysing treatments to identifying trends and more. Healthcare industry is gearing up to use the power of data and applying IT to spread medical care further and looking at ways to control cost.
Connecting Healthcare via IT
Adoption of IT has led the healthcare industry to take a huge leap of faith. A modern hospital feels paralysed, if there is an interruption of IT services. A modern facility today drives complete patient life cycle in the hospital using IT. The cycle starts from patient visit to OPD to diagnostics to IP admission to pharmaceutical indent to availability of diagnostic reports and image availability. This has brought transparency in billing process and provides more time for patient-centric services.
IT Investments
The hospital being con conceived in the later part of the first decade of the millen millennium, the hospital was designed for consumption and drive of IT. The hospital started with a 10 gig backbone along with HIS, PACS, VoIP and ERP. The older HIS has since been retired and a newer more robust HIS has been implemented and deployed and being used. ERP since has been expanded to include all HR functionalities and to integrate HIS for billing and MM for consumption. The hospital gets their data online in SAP for AR, AP and material consumption and ordering. The hospital has expanded the voice network too. It has its own contact center to facilitate patient queries and appointments and admissions and manage patient emergencies.
Shift in Perception
I used to work for the world’s largest software company before making a move into healthcare IT in early 2008. I had joined Medanta - the Medicity in Gurgaon before moving to KDAH in late 2011. People had told me that it is a new industry and might be a career ender. And when I started my new role, I realised it is an industry which has huge potential to consume and deploy IT. In the last eight years, I have seen the healthcare practitioners asking for more every half year. We as IT practitioners are happy to be in a scenario where the demand is higher than supply. We have to slow them down to bandwidth limit on servicing the requests. For the complete interview log on to: ehealth.eletsonline.com
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Industry Profile
Jaypee Hospital Name Alok Khare Designation VP-IT Organisation Jaypee Hospital, Noida Website www.jaypeehealthcare.com
Lerveraging Technology
T
he hospital operates with the cutting edge technology, such as iplane ath ab, which has two large flat detectors for real time imaging along with Clarity platform and advance interventional tool for swift diagnosis; Hybrid OR fulfills the role of both an operating room and a catheterisation laboratory and also helps improve the quality and cost-effectiveness apart from minimising risk of patient care by expanding room capabilities and broadening the procedure mix; LINAC system is engineered to deliver higher doses to smaller areas, allowing treatment of the most challenging cases, as it delivers treatment with speed and accuracy; PET CT motion technology facilitates swift diagnosis, lesser exposure to radioactive medicine, and optimum imaging quality SPE T T is an advanced and highly integrated diagnostic solution which expands the role of nuclear medicine into routine surgical planning, orthopaedics, advanced cardiology and much more with minimum dose and maximum speed while providing the highest possible image quality. ther technologies include MRI, T Scan with spectral imaging, endoscopy, AT lab, digital mammography, E A, iochemistry and Immunoassay Analyser, olour Flow ytometer: anto iosciences.
rgani a ion Profile
The Jaypee Hospital is conceptualised on the vision of promoting world-class healthcare amongst the masses by providing quality and affordable medical care with commitment. The hospital has been planned and designed as a 1200-bedded tertiary care multi-speciality facility and has commissioned 525 beds in the first phase.
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Connecting Healthcare via IT
IT plays ma or role in customer satisfaction. The on online appointment, decentralised billing, Queue ManMan agement System, EMR, patient portal and many such things have helped patients and even hospital staff in im improving turnaround time. IT adoption by hospital staff has helped in improving their productivity and employee satisfaction. Happy and satisfied employees serve better and make patients happy and satisfied. Most of the hospital users are becoming very demanding as many of them are IT savvy.
Industry Profile
Jaslok Hospital & Research Centre Name Viloo Williams Designation CIO Organisation Jaslok Hospital & Research Centre, Mumbai Website: www.jaslokhospital.net
Transforming Medical Infrastructure
I
T has definitely evolved within the medical infrastructure. Software has always been an essential part of all medical systems but presently we look into all kinds of automated applications driving the day-to-day operations of healthcare organisations and patient services. igital technology covers many aspects as part of medical infrastructure. Earlier automated patient data collection, analysis reporting were restricted to massive computers and terminals through legacy systems. Today, all types of data can be captured, analysed, retrieved and reported on small hand-held devices, interactively from anywhere, anytime. Systems and applications have become platform-independent, database-independent and are available in various open-source formats that help in reducing costs. Web technology for mobility and telemedicine has made it possible to take healthcare services to the remotest areas.
IT Investment
aslok, a more than -year-old hospital, has been a pioneer in IT systems. Electronic A T, billing, and payroll were implemented way back in the year - using applications and later migrated to racle as backend database. aslok has invested a lot in IT over the past decades and is continuing to invest in better information systems.
Connecting Healthcare via IT
Reduction in patient turnaround-time during admissions, discharges, investigations or diagnostic reports, bill settlements are possible with the implemention of strong hospital information management systems (HIMS). Systems such as PA S, RIMS and IMS with integrated auto-analysers, have enabled quicker digital reporting with per cent accuracy and lesser human-error. ogistics and inventory management system helps in maintaining better inventory levels thus contributing to cost reduction. The analysis of collected data through business analytics tools helps develop research which in turn contributes to quality care for the patient.
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Shift in Perception
There is a huge shift in perception among users. octors who never touched a computer in the past are now using digital devices efficiently. Internet access is a key driver in changing user attitudes. Any information that took days to search in books, is now available at the click of a single button as e-books, e- ournals and databases. Administrative users who spent hours filling registers are the happiest lot. IT applications have helped them in capturing patient information once and retrieving it anytime, anywhere, any number of times be it demographics, medical records, investigative reports or financial data. Imagine the amount of time saved for every type of user.
Leveraging Technology
Expectations of patients go beyond excellent medical treatment and great doctors they want their medical information at the click of a button and get impatient with delays. We have full-fledged in-house data centre and every ma or function is automated like our central HIMS, PA S, HR systems and financials. Patients communicate with our hospital for everything via email, sharing digital reports and taking second opinions. aslok hospital is fully WiFi-enabled which is a value-added service for patients. As a next step, we are focusing on mobility-driven applications, telemedicine and improved Internet based patient engagement such as online availability of various services with a payment gateway. For the complete interview log on to: ehealth.eletsonline.com
Industry Profile
BLK Super Speciality Hospital Name Prashant Singh Designation GM-IT Organisation Radiant Life Care Pvt Ltd (Operating BLK Super Speciality Hospital - Delhi and Nanavati Super Speciality Hospital - Mumbai) Website www.blkhospital.com
Transforming Medical Infrastructure
I
T has always played a crucial role in developing medical technology which plays a strategic role in fostering the change of healthcare delivery towards better health outcomes. We can see the increasing trend in IT budget considering an integral part of the medical infrastructure. Earlier most hospitals used to take IT as the billing software in India, which now has changed in the last decade and lots of new technologies have taken a lead in this domain. Applications doing machine interfacing have really changed the perception giving a very welcome outcome in terms of automation and reduced paper work so that the time spent on administration work can be better utilised towards patient care and medical outcome. Applications developed towards capturing patient feedback in various interactions during healthcare delivery has really given hospitals an insight as to what a patient expects in terms of medical and non-medical needs. Penetration of mobile application has given the choice of getting the healthcare in patient’s hands in terms of interaction with doctors, getting medicine reminder, viewing diagnostic reports and so on.
Tech for Care Delivery
Presently, the Radiant Life Group operates two hospitals across India and as part of our strategy to ensure the common patient experience both the hospitals runs on the same IT platform in terms of the Hospital Information System (HIS), patient portals, mobile app etc. Even we try to keep the look and feel of the patient literature same.
Shift in Perception
Recent developments like launch of various e-com or mobile applications has increased the awareness of application usage and also has created a knowledge base. Earlier, the application was only perceived as the workflow automation in an office environment. I have certainly seen the increasing trend in terms of the users demand to automate a process as well as the advanced level MIS to take the maximum benefit out of an application. The medical staff is also inclined towards creating the best use case out of the application, they are ready to accept the power and advantages of IT in the healthcare delivery system toward analysis and clinical outcome.
Connecting Healthcare via IT
IT has certainly contributed a lot to the better care delivery to patients. The patient is getting more transparency while getting the healthcare services at the hospital. Interfacing with technologies such as RFID, telemedicine, bar coding, mobile application etc., have made the healthcare more instant. IT is helping in reduction of the medical errors by implementing an interface between the application and medical devices.
IT Investments
While setting up IT infrastructure in a hospital or any organisation it is important that the foundation is made future-proof and strong enough to handle the long terms of applications and technology. Hence, the initial investments involved an agile and robust IT infrastructure starting from the passive and active network, well-planned server architecture, wifi, telecommunication infrastructure, mailing solution and an ERP.
For the complete interview log on to: ehealth.eletsonline.com
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Industry Profile
Rajiv Gandhi Cancer Institute & Research Centre Name Jai Prakash Dwivedi Designation CIO Organisation Rajiv Gandhi Cancer Institute & Research Centre, New Delhi Website www.rgcirc.org
Transforming Medical Infrastructure
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nitially in hospitals the Electronic Data Processing (EDP) was a small department located in a corner of the basement mostly into billing and printing of typed reports. Later a few forms of modules like lab and radiology reporting workflow, integration of ab Analysers with HIS, and appointment booking came into being. ow almost all ma or hospitals have HIS system to manage workflow of patients, employees, material, lab and radiology, revenue and expense accounting, billing etc. Electronic Health Record System (EHR) has helped the patient within a hospital by automating workflows. Picture Archival ommunication System (PA S) helps the patients and doctors by storing images ( -Ray, T, MRI etc.) in digital form. Patient portal, mHealth, real time management dashboards, clinical decision support system with evidence based medicine are some of the buzzwords for past couple of years.
Leveraging Technology
Ra iv andhi ancer Institute Research entre has used IT extensively to improve outcome, affordability and patient experience - the three facets of healthcare delivery. We have a robust IT infrastructure and our servers are virtualised and scalable. We have built adequate network security using firewall and have implemented strict IT security policy. WiFi facilitates our doctors and nurses to use IT systems on the move. octors have been equipped with iPA s and can see patient records while on rounds. ur Ts is connected with patient record system and PA S. The surgeons can refer to -Ray, T, MRI etc. or check treatment history, allergies, prior surgeries and any other details online during surgery. The clinicians and IT team are working hand in hand to scale up healthcare delivery capabilities.
Shift in Perception
There is dramatic change in perception over the years. Acceptance came in non-medical areas first. Hospital operations are now managed using IT application in all medium and large hospitals. The problem is not of acceptance but more of meeting expectations. The application service providers have to rise up to user expectations. n the clinical applications side, the picture is interesting. As management issues mandate for going paperless, there comes strong resistance, partly due to demand on clinician’s time in making data entry and rest due to general inertia for any change. Shortcomings of the IT systems are also responsible for this resistance. Most of these systems are designed keeping western conditions in mind. Patients per doctor are many more here.
Innovating Technology
IT adoption significantly reduces the chances of man manual errors during diagnosis and treatment. The online billing and lab sample with barcodes ensure there are no manual errors. PA S (integrated with HIS) enables dynamic modality work lists and thus automatically schedules all the investigations in order of billing. Patient vitals (temperature, P, Pulse Rate etc.) could be captured automatically using bluetooth enabled devices integrated with EHR. Although IT helps the operations, it does not save manpower, but it improves the quality of the output that human resources produce. Patient portal enables the patient’s access to the reports at home reducing the hospital visits. All these improve affordability of the treatment.
For the complete interview log on to: ehealth.eletsonline.com
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Industry Profile
Sir Ganga Ram Hospital Name Niranjan K Ramakrishnan Designation CIO Organisation Sir Ganga Ram Hospital, New Delhi Website www.sgrh.com
Logo
Transforming Medical Infrastructure Every segment of healthcare delivery system is struggling with increasing costs, inconsistent processes and uneven quality, notwithstanding the sweat of highly skilled clinicians, reputed administrators and committed paramedical staff. There is a requirement of additional funding to deliver better patient care, to hire good quality resources or to adopt new technologies which are compensated by reducing treatment cost of the patient. Therefore, the adoption of right technology and realising the value of investment is the only solution to this.
Tech for Care Delivery
Being known in the industry as ‘People’s Own Hospital’, at Sir Ganga Ram Hospital, our overall service methodology doesn’t differentiate the varied class of patients reaching out to us for availing healthcare service. As our IT strategy is defined by the end users and user champions of various functional units, be it digital health card, loud ased ab Reporting system, OPD Automation, patient kiosk and all other IT services are common to all healthcare services and all classes of consumers of healthcare services.
IT Investments
Sir anga Ram Hospital has recently completed a decade of successful adoption of full-fledged IT automation and one of the few hospitals whose IT spending is more than the industry standard of 2.5 per cent for maintenance and 4 to 5 per cent of adoption or revamping budget with respect to the overall turnover.
Shift in Perception
Effective usage of right health IT solutions may form the reliable source of analytical data. Well established back office solutions and ERP tools drive the business intelligence with respect to business, finance, human resources and material inventory perspective. Doctor driven healthcare organisations started adopting technology for the clinical outcome analysis using the evidence based decision support system.
Leveraging Technology
When all other hospitals still understand what cloud computing is, Sir Gangaram Hospital is already a user of cloud. It is privilege to be associated with an organisation where the Board of Management and Trust Society’s understanding on the value of any new technology such as cloud, advanced biometric technologies, eProcurement, and SMA extends a whole hearted support for adoption. We believe the real value of IT is when the patient experience in the hospital improves without burdening their pocket.
Innovating Technology
The real benefit is not in the data capturing process but in retrieval and analysis of the processed data is the missing concept in majority of change management from paper to digitised process. Recent shift in the adoption of IT is the result of visible value of the investment due to the quick retrieval of necessary information that helps the stakeholders to take right decisions and business analytics at a click of the button on their mobile phones. At Sir Ganga Ram Hospital, end user inputs define the strategy and then we look out for the available technology that aligns with our strategy. For the complete interview log on to: ehealth.eletsonline.com
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Industry Profile
Action Cancer Hospital Name Vikas Tyagi Designation CIO Organisation Action Cancer Hospital, New Delhi Website www.actioncancerhospital.com
Transforming Medical Infrastructure
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T is now a backbone of any medical institute as important as antibiotic required in the management of the patients for over two decades now. IT has been vastly used in every segment of the medical infrastructure. Now, there are many big IT names providing their services in the healthcare sector. As a healthcare aspirant, I look forward to virtual hospitals so that consultations between patients and consultants can be done through mobile technology or computers at home. It is certainly a technology which drives the strategy which makes us get optimum utilisation of technology.
Connecting Healthcare via IT
In this high-tech era, IT has really contributed to delivery of better healthcare. Nowadays, even small applications like Whatsapp give you an abundant liberty to send your reports anywhere across the globe and one can consult for any second opinion. So this is the power of technology. In old days, paper reports had to be kept in the record rooms, but no more. Digitally encrypted data which requires minimal space and lessens the worry of the record being damaged due to various reasons.
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IT Investments
IT investments are re recurring investments; as hospitals need to upgrade their medical equipment as the new technology comes to treat the patients. IT tools have to be kept has to at par for the latest technology. In our hospital, most of the jobs are done using IT tools. It is visible. As the patient comes for the registration and till discharge, everything is communicated and recorded through various IT driven applications.
Shift in Perception
The shift in perception is because if the user will not share the requirement with the IT people, it would not be possible for them to deliver the right application for the benefit of medical infrastructure. In our Action Cancer Hospital, all the patients’ treatment is communicated through IT applications to all the branches from patient’s registration, admission, blood investigations, treatment protocols, discharge, and billing all this is available on just one click.
Industry Profile
Asian Institute of Medical Sciences Name Lakshman Sharma Designation CIO Organisation Asian Institute of Medical Sciences, Faridabad Website www.aimsindia.com
Transforming Medical Infrastructure
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rom the past two decades, information technology has made a significant difference in the quality, standards of medical care, and infrastructure in the country. Approximately two decades back there were bigger government hospitals and smaller private clinics. There was no way to maintain patient’s case record digitally, to update or transmit to another location. ack then, when lab record were updated manually, doctors were not able to get the patient details on time, duplicity of patient records, happend and computer access was limited. ater, with the IT and telecom revolution in the country, the information and communication systems across the country entered a magical transformation phase. ow doctors can view patient records anytime and anywhere in a secured domain. There are other areas as well where IT has played a vital role in healthcare industry such as radiology, ab Information System ( IS), Hospital Information System (HIS), telemedicine and many more.
Shift in Perception
Today, one can see the shift in patients’ expectations. They are aware of the conveniences and enhanced service quality that information technology brings to several aspects of their day to day life, for instance Internet, entertainment, banking and travel information and health information. Therefore, their expectations are extremely high when it comes to a critical service like healthcare. So, information technology can fulfil a lot of those expectations because whether the healthcare facility is large or small, having the right information technology can provide complete information on an individual’s health that is not ust accessible in a standard format on computer and mobile devices but secure access to medical information enabling a smooth automated workflow to ensure patient satisfaction.
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IT Investments
Asian Institute of Medical Sciences is the first corporate hospital that startstart ed its IT operations from the begin beginning after it was commissioned. From the initial stage we started processes of automation, computerisation, an electronic medical record system, fully automated computerised billing system, and omputerised Ward Management System, integrated PA S system for radiology images and ab Information System ( IS) for automated laboratory. Asian Institute of Medical Sciences is committed to updating each of these areas to keep up with the latest innovations in IT related processes including the current upgrade to the next level of advancement in HIS and ERP, which is currently going on across the entire group.
Industry Profile
Bhagwan Mahaveer Cancer Hospital & Research Centre Name Maj Gen S C Pareek, Retd Designation Medical Director Organisation Bhagwan Mahaveer Cancer Hospital & Research Centre, Jaipur Website www.bmchrc.org
Transforming Medical Infrastructure
I
nformation Technology has made significant contributions to our world, and so healthcare industry. With the increased use of Electronic Medical Records (EMR), telehealth services, and mobile technologies like tablets and smart phones, physicians and patients are both seeing the benefits that these new medical technologies are bringing. Medical technology has evolved from introducing doctors to new equipment to use inside private practices and hospitals to connecting patients and doctors thousands of miles away through telecommunications. It is not uncommon in today’s world for patients to hold video conferences with physicians to save time and money normally spent on traveling to another geographic location or send health information instantaneously to any specialist or doctor in the world.
Connecting Healthcare via IT
Adoption of technologies such as HIS system with different modules, clinical decision support, computerised disease registries, computerised provider order entry, consumer health IT applications, to view online laboratory reports, electronic medical record systems (EMRs, EHRs, and PHRs), electronic prescribing, and telehealth in hospitals has contributed to better care delivery to patients. We have started processes of automation, computerisation: a sophisticated billing, inventory, laboratory etc systems that was fully automated. And, we are committed to updating each of these areas to keep up with the latest innovations in IT related processes including the current upgrade to the next level of advancement in the HIS, which are currently going on.
Shift in Perception
Today, patients who walk into hospitals are aware of the conveniences and enhanced service quality that IT brings to several aspects of their daily lives, for example. Therefore, their expectations are extremely high when it comes to a crucial service like healthcare. It is here that IT can fulfill a lot of those expectations because whether the healthcare facility is large or small, having the right IT infrastructure can provide: comprehensive information on an individual’s health in a standard format. IT enables a smooth automated work flow to ensure customer satisfaction, for better tracking and support.
Innovating Technology
Healthcare innovation can be defined as the introduction of a new concept, idea, service, process, or product aimed at improving treatment, diagnosis, education, outreach, prevention and research, and with the long term goals of improving quality, safety, outcomes, efficiency and costs. IT remains a key driver of innovation in healthcare while hospitals and other care providers have long been quick to adopt breakthrough technology in medical devices, procedures and treatments, far less attention has focused on innovations in networking and communications.
For the complete interview log on to: ehealth.eletsonline.com
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Industry Profile
MEDICA Superspecialty Hospital Name Syed Kadam Murshed Designation Head- IT Organisation MEDICA Hospitals Pvt Ltd, Kolkata Website www.medicahospitals.in
Transforming Medical Infrastructure
T
he whole world is changing on the flywheels of IT, no doubt. n the contrary, we can see, from a mere support department, information technology has taken over charge to become the integrated solution provider across industries. Healthcare is not an exception. The department can enable management to control, monitor, analyse, and decide on future steps to be taken on real time basis. The thinkers, enablers, innovators, implementers, users, managers, vendors and entrepreneurs of healthcare sector all have contributed to this paradigm shift. asic HIS, from mere billing and financial accounting tool, has evolved as an integrated mechanism to supervise the clinical and operational collaboration of the hospitals as well. onvergence of telemedicine, eI , PA S, EMR and adoption of other cutting edge technologies has made the medical infrastructure and facilities more liquid in nature. efore two decades, taking a printed bill from the computer might be possible in the country but the quality of care process, analysis and management of care were not part or concern in IT.
Connecting Healthcare via IT
Adoption of computerised order entry by physicians, ePrescribing, maintaining problem list, managing drug or allergy reaction, viewing patient history, clinical decision support system can create a better doctor or care providers for the society. Interfacing the medical equipment with basic IT infrastructures and applications started providing information to the clinicians on their mobile phones on the move. Early detection of infectious disease or outbreaks in the locality, improved tracking of severe disease management etc could not be thought of without IT adoption in the healthcare industry. Improved quality of healthcare, prevention of medical errors, reduction in the healthcare costs, increases in the administrative efficiencies, and a decrease in the amount of paperwork, among others, has increased the access to affordable healthcare options.
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Innovating Technology
The basic technology is re required for innovation, but it is the passion, plan and strategy which set it right. Without a proper plan or strategy, an innovation can neither be driven nor implemented. If we define innovation as to create something new to the world or enabling a product in such a way that the non-consumers become future customers, innovation is surely a design, plan and strategy and not mere technology. Without proper strategy, innovation will become unpredictable and lead to the mystery. owadays, corporate have created a separate team for innovation, who decides and formulates a strategy to get innovations correctly implemented in the targeted environment.
Way Forward
ver the past few years, we have seen IT improve the consumer experience in al almost every aspect of our lives, including the way we manage our finances, shop, and book travel. ut, healthcare has been slower to leverage this technology. onsumers of Healthcare or patients are arguably best positioned to decide whom to bring into their circle of care, and when and with whom to share their vital health information. eside, empowering the consumers, hospitals will use IoT, analytics, big data, mobility and all other upcoming technologies in a better way, I am sure. Right marketing and branding decisions and activities can take place on basis of adapting new technology. The correct adoption of expert IT system will reduce unnecessary admission less number of beds will be required in the society, lower A S in hospitals and reduce cost for treatment of patients. For the complete interview log on to: ehealth.eletsonline.com
Industry Profile
Sunshine Global Hospitals Name Pramod Kulkarni Designation Group Head – IT & Systems Organisation Sunshine Global Hospitals, Vadodara Website www.sunshineglobalhospitals.com
Transforming Medical Infrastructure
H
ealthcare industry of the country is experiencing a steady and stable transformation, majorly with Information Technology playing a core role in every aspect of healthcare through faster adaptability of advanced technologies, resulting in reduction of service costs and provision of quality healthcare at affordable prices. IT is increasingly penetrating into the healthcare service delivery in the country as well, driven by the need to reduce the out of pocket expenditure, efficiency imperatives, interoperability of existing fragmented hospital systems and increased health awareness among citizens. Here Information Technology plays a crucial role in transforming and enabling healthcare inclusion through the length and breadth of the country. This is the demand of the decade with innovative adoptions. We, Sunshine Global Hospitals, are the part of this opportunity.
Leveraging Technology
In our hospitals, we use IT in many sectors, like we have a Sunshine Hospital app for patients. We still continue to deliver patient care even after the patient gets a discharge from the hospital. Our app automatically gives medicines reminder alert to the patients at home as per prescribed doses and time. We are regularly doing online workshops, with LIVE telecasting from OT to Our Auditorium. HIMS is interlinked with all department and it is web based, can be accessed from any location and branch. We are Innovated Happiness ICU Concept, that we have a visitor’s room having a large TV set. We connect the ICU patient video through TAB and relay on that TV set for Patient relative. Which prevent ICU infection and patient relatives can see the patient and his or her smile. SMS alerts to Admitting, Treating and Referring Doctor. At Sunshine Global hospitals, we are using the same for doctors and consultants.
Innovating Technology
There should be both - a strategic vision and availa availability of technology. But, strategic vision is important as then only we can be able to use tchnology to its fullest potential. For strategic vision, management and user support is very important. Without them, we cannot realise these dreams. ‘Happiness ICU’ is an example of both. Our Director Dr Rajiv Shah has a vision about how we can help patient relatives without breaking any ICU care and control infection. So we searched and used available resources like TV, tablet and Video Calling Software (Skype). Another example is our Group COO Neeraj Lal, who wants that we should keep in touch with patients after discharge also. These days everyone has a smartphone, so why we should be present through the app. We, therefore, developed a Sunshine Android app.
Way Forward
Indian Healthcare In Industry is fastest growing Industry. The future of IT driven hospitals is like risris ing of the Sun. They can do the things in a cost-effective and time-saving manner with promptness and accuracy in patient care. Also, they can become virtual and across-the-globe phenomenon through technology. They will readily accept the challenges and get better solutions with the help of IT. Hospitals become more strategic by following Patient Care Indicator and their norms, along with analytics. Hospitals will connect patients as an Online Health Guide and serve as a caretaker for them. This is the key of digital expansions.
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Industry Profile
Max Hospital Name Sumit Puri Designation CIO Organisation Max Healthcare, Gurgaon Website www.maxhealthcare.in
Transforming Medical Infrastructure
I
nvestments in information technology have been made for setting up state-of-the-art infrastructure and systems focused on patient care such as Electronic Health Record System (EHRS), centrally integrated Hospital Information System (HIS), bar coded medical assessments, Picture Archiving and Communication System (PACS) imaging system and Cloud based CRM application for better customer engagement. Using IT has become one of the best solutions for the hospital management to decrease cost and increase patient satisfaction improving the hospital processes to provide high quality patient care. The role of digital technology in medical care has increased and its delivery has expanded at an ever-increasing pace.
Connecting healthcare via IT
The adoption of IT in hospitals has significantly enhanced patient safety and care. Max Healthcare is built on the credo of ‘Seva Bhava’ to customers. We are one of the first hospitals in the country to use Electronic medica health records system integrated with bar coded medicine administration to identify and reduce clinical errors, and are actively using technology to enhance patient experience by reducing patient registration, admission and discharge times. Technology is one of the key pillars for improving scalability and growth at Max . We have grown both organically and inorganically in the last few years and technology has been critical in seamless integration of new hospitals and enabling standardised processes for patient care.
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Transforming Medical Infrastructure
Although there has been some good growth in IT as a part of medical infrastructure over the last two decades, the development is not evenly spread and there is still a lot of potential for healthcare IT infrastructure to improve in India. Many hospitals, especially in public health space, still use legacy infrastructure and systems which constrains their ability to fully leverage latest advancements in healthcare technology. With increased emergence of IOT and lifestyle related diseases over the last decade in particular, at Max in particular, we are focusing on setting up an IT ecosystem which enables prevention and wellness rather than only managing disease related care.
Industry Profile
SevenHills Hospital, Mumbai Name Suresh Kumar Designation CIO Organisation SevenHills Hospital, Mumbai Website www.sevenhillshospital.com
Transforming Medical Infrastructure
S
evenHills Hospital offers cutting edge technology for diagnostic and therapeutic procedures. The hospital is known for its legacy of experience of over 11 years in the healthcare IT. Suresh Kumar, Head of SevenHills Hospitals, e-Health unit, is responsible for ensuring that the Information Technology investments are aligned with its strategic business objectives. And he is also accountable for creating a vision and developing goals, performance measures, plans and policy decisions to move the enterprise to a future is the healthcare brand.
Leveraging Technology
Modern societies reap great benefits from technological advancements and the healthcare sector is no different. SevenHills Hospital incorporates the latest technology in patient care that helps the doctors diagnose, treat effectively and efficiently. It offers state-of-the -art in-patient and out-patient facilities, focusing on the comfort and safety of our patients and their loved ones. When patients visit a SevenHills hospital, they are directed to a medical officer who collects all necessary information of the patient like past medical history, treatment etc. He is then provided with a unique health identification number ( HI ), a number for a lifetime through which all the records of the patient can be retrieved. Based on the symptoms of a disease, they are directed to the consultant of a specific department. nce the patient goes to the consultant, the doctor has the entire history of the patient on their dashboard.
Way Forward
SevenHills Group cur currently has two hospitals, (Ma located in Mumbai (Maharashtra) and VisakhapatVisakhapat nam (Andhra Pradesh). The e-Health unit of the hospital is now planning to make voice recognition software for a few senior doctors who chose to stay away from making computer entries. The software is available to other hospitals and healthcare companies in
India and globally and they are in the process of obtaining meaningful use certification. Healthcare companies can choose to buy the solution completely or opt for a Software-as-aService (SaaS) model. The Hospital has over two decades of experience in the healthcare sector, providing quality healthcare and valuable experience, supported by a team of compassionate and dedicated medical professionals.
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Industry Profile
SAL Hospital & Medical Institute Name Dilip Jain Designation CIO Organisation SAL Hospital & Medical Institute, Ahmedabad Website www.salhospital.com
Transforming Medical Infrastructure
I
T has kept pace with the development of the medical infrastructure in the past two decades. It has changed the way medicine is practised, preached (taught), and promulgated. Considerable amount of datasets on various medical conditions are now readily available, and these data come from all over the world. Furthermore, expensive medical books, slides and other materials are now available over the Internet for student references. Details on various conditions, hitherto ‘knowledge-limited’ to only a small group of people, are made comprehensible to lay people thus empowering the common man. CT and MRI scan technologies have advanced the knowledge of the internals of the human body to the extent that the understanding of various parts of body and in particular that of the brain is now well-advanced. As a result, both static and dynamic workings of anybody part and their effectiveness can be understood which can improve early diagnosis of diseases and possible cure and or intervention. IT is delivering the greatest benefits in the fields of general practice through extended ‘medical awareness-seeding’ in the common person. Patients are well-informed about the diseases they have than themselves. Other significant benefits to medicine from IT are in the areas of drug delivery mechanisms particularly for cancer and other debilitating diseases. With the advent of nanotechnology, (medical) nanobots can deliver the precise amount of drug at the right place and at the right time.
Way Forward IT driven hospitals would be able to offer excellent and seamless services. The overall patient or patient relatives and the hospital staff would be seamless and uniform across the hospital. Newer priorities for public spend of budgetary amounts need to include investments in medical information technologies and related service providers.
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IT Investments
Automation of various activities such as indenting of medicines by wards from pharmacy, bidirectional interfacing of all equipment with the HIS, messaging to consultants or staff from the HIS for critical information, viewing ICU patient monitoring from anywhere across the intranet or internet, EMR, mobile apps that allow authorised users to login into the hospital IT infrastructure from anywhere in the world through the internet. A stepwise automation of manual activities into the HIS / PACS/ EMR is required to scale up the healthcare delivery. Also, the availability of specific technology at reasonable prices drives innovation of new tools that can be useful for hospitals. SAL Hospital has incorporated Integrated HIS, PACS, video conferencing to consult remote patients and EMR for better patient care.
Shift in Perception
Yes. India’s greatest advantages are its English-speaking population, highlytrained IT workforce and medical professionals, and excellent hospital system at well-below Western costs. Technology further reduces the overall costs of not only of diagnostics and treatment but also makes recovery faster, thereby leading to reduced loss of productivity. What is therefore needed is extensive integrated IT and medical infrastructure that could reduce the digital divide among the population thereby creating awareness in healthcare. India’s human resources in IT and healthcare should be able to take care of the rest of the world’s healthcare thereby becoming the ‘Medical Epicentre’ of the world.
Industry Profile
Saket City Hospital Name Dr Garima Singh Designation CEO Organisation Saket City Hospital, New Delhi Website www.saketcityhospital.com
Transforming Medical Infrastructure
I
T in healthcare started off with the aim of simplifying medical records by having a unique patient ID and making billing transactions faster. Access to patient records was made faster, which in turn enabled better clinical decisions (and therefore outcomes) by referring to past records in a timely fashion. Also, patient experience in non-value added services such as billing for services was made faster. Thereafter, next phase was for real-time availability of diagnostic reports to medical professionals, where a lot of clinical decisions are taken (Lab Information System, Radiology Information System, PACS etc). In the past few years, emphasis has been on using technology to minimise errors by using applications, which give an alert to physicians and nurses in a timely fashion. So it could avert adverse events and improve business efficiencies. Important decisions to be taken by any institution prior to investing into new technology are to ensure that the R I clearly takes into account the patient outcome and experience, apart from improving efficiencies. Simultaneously, physician and nursing cadres should be able to perceive ease in delivery of care with the use of technology.
Shift in Perception
Healthcare has become a fast adopter of technology. Applications that enable faster decision making and improve patient care and experience are swiftly adopted and put to use. Healthcare applications on mobile phones are being used to give medication reminders for improved compliance, panic button to call an ambulance when there is an emergency and much more. From non-clinician segment, technology is used to manage supply chain, payroll management, and financial management, within the hospitals.
Innovating Technology
In healthcare, innovation aware is driven by keen awareness of patient needs and desire to improve clinical outcomes and to improve cost of delivery of care. This enables development of appropriate technology tools or innovations that furthers the cause of patients and healthcare at large. Health Information System (HIS) is extremely vital in different ways. Saket City Hospital have developed own HIS with a third party and has been instituted right across the system. All our billing, radiology patient flows are managed through HIS.
Way Forward
Information technolotechnolo gy is now the backbone of healthcare. It is the common thread that weaves across all functions of a hospital right from clinical to non-clinical functions. The improvement in efficiencies, patient outcomes and experience are indicative enough that hospitals will ride the technology wave going forward and patients will choose safer technology driven hospitals as they would be linked with better clinical outcomes that can be assessed objectively.
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Industry Profile
Pushpawati Singhania Research Institute Name Joseph Designation Head IT Organisation Pushpawati Singhania Research Institute, New Delhi Website www.psrihospital.com
Transforming Medical Infrastructure
T
he present digital era helps the common people get their medical records at their fingertips. Patients take the value of both medical services and the technology services provided by the hospital and this increases the service efficiency of the hospital in enhancing the productivity of people by doing quality work instead of spending their time in collating, compiling, validating and entering data. PSRI is one of the hospitals which has installed SAP in the front end as HIS for the transactional activities of patients and to integrate with different applications and bio-medical machine.
Connecting Healthcare via IT
The adoption of IT in hospital industry helps both the patients as well as the hospitals to collect and record patient’s medical history. igitalisation plays an effective role in hospital services and it increases the efficiency to hospital staff and delivers remarkable outputs at a much faster rate.
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IT Investments
PSRI Hospital gives much importance to IT infra infraprostructure even in the initial stage we have pro cured two servers, structured network solutions with the latest model switches, firewall and antivirus for securing the network and a dedicated ata entre with our parent company Tyre.
Industry Profile
Paras Hospital Name Shuvankar Pramanick Designation CIO Organisation Paras Hospital, Gurgoan Website www.parashospitals.com
Organisation Profile
I
ndia is emerging as one of the leaders in the healthcare sector. With an idea of increasing this rate of this growth, Paras Healthcare aims to provide exceptional medical care to everybody. After meeting with success in Gurgaon, the hospital is looking to move to other cities to address the issues of accessibility, affordability, and quality. It is their endeavor to ensure that healthcare becomes a right and a reality for the common man. The hospitals centre of excellence lies in neurosciences, cardiac sciences, orthopaedics and joint replacement, cancer care, renal sciences, gastroenterology and GI surgery, general and laparoscopic surgery, bariatric surgery, plastic and reconstructive surgery, critical care, etc.
Leveraging Technology
With IT playing the core role the healthcare industry is experiencing a steady and stable transformation ensuring adaptability of advanced technologies, reduction of service costs and provision of quality healthcare at affordable prices. Hospital Information System (HIS) is the core not just for the billing part, but also for everything else – whether it is statistical data, patient data, etc., both from hospital’s and doctor’s perspective. We are slowly adopting Electronic Medical Records (EMR) in our departments, which have shown pro-activeness and willingness. We are taking it as a twofive years’ plan to implement across the board. What we can do is bring in EMR in a phased manner, and at the backhand use Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP); we are using Microsoft Dynamics Navision ERP 2 – HIS, but then talking to each other is mandatory. From the patient’s perspective, data view or record keeping, EMR will become an important tool with each passing day.
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Industry Profile
Wockhardt Hospital Name Sumit Singh Designation CIO Organisation Wockhardt Hospital, Mumbai Website www.wockhardthospitals.com
Organisation Profile
W
ithin a short period since its inception, Wockhardt Hospitals has become a leading health service provider with its strong presence in the western parts of the country i.e. Mumbai, Nagpur, Rajkot, Nasik, Goa and Surat. This group of nine hospitals fulfills the need of the community in its chosen field of super specialty like ardiology, Orthopedics, Neurology, Gastroenterology, Urology, Aesthetics and Minimal Access Surgery. They follow process driven quality systems that adhere to international standards of clinical care, safe environment, infection control and respect for patient rights and privacy. With state of the art multi-disciplinary capabilities and worldclass infrastructure and technology, we enrich the quality of life of every patient in a caring and nurturing environment and greatest respect for human dignity and life. Sumit Singh leads an energetic IT organisation to pursue and achieve higher business goals and targets for the organisation, bring change and innovation, new thinking and fresh ideas to the table, take on new initiatives and tackle old problems.
Leveraging Technology
As an associate hospital of Partners Medical International in India, Wockhardt Hospitals derive knowledge and acumen from various associated Hospitals in the world and bring to its patients, the global standards in technology and clinical expertise related to the management of diseases and tertiary care. In pursuance of our vision to establish new-age medical facilities and centres of clinical excellence in India, Wockhardt Hospitals, entered into a strategic alliance with Partners Medical International in Boston, USA. This exclusive association enables access to Harvard’s expertise and clinical acumen in the areas of medical innovation and training.
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Industry Profile
Artemis Hospital Name Kapil Mehrotra Designation CIO Organisation Artemis Hospital, Gurgoan Website www.artemishospitals.com
Transforming Medical Infrastructure
I
ts drive to create an integrated world-class healthcare system, Artemis Healthcare Institute (AHI) has built an infrastructure backed by cutting-edge medical technology. The hospital has installed some of the most advanced equipment in predictive, diagnostic and therapeutic imaging. Kapil Mehrotra, responsible for Information Systems function in the Artemis Hospital, has extensive experience in development and deployment of IT strategy, systems and integration projects for domestic and international clients. Rated as one of India’s top Most 100 Respected CIOs and an IT thought leader, he has won several prestigious recognitions including India’s Best CIO, Next 100, and India’s Best IT Manager. He has also featured in the list of India’s top 100 CIOs.
rgani a ion Profile
The corporate value system at Artemis is founded on three pillars – Service, Compassion and Integrity. We care for customers and deliver world class patient care services, excel in the delivery of specialised medical care supported by comprehensive research and education. Artemis develops, applys, evaluates and shares new technologies and is’ an active partner in local community initiatives and contribute their well-being and development.
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Industry Profile
P D Hinduja Hospital & Medical Research Centre Name Mahesh Shinde Designation Director – IT Organisation P D Hinduja Hospital & Medical Research Centre, Mumbai Website www.hindujahospital.com
Organisation Profile
P
D Hinduja Hospital & Medical Research Centre, which started off as a clinic in 1951, has provided more than six decades of selfless and dedicated service by providing quality healthcare to the people. The hospital’s community outreach programmes range from physician seminars to special events like diabetes walk, disaster management drills, organ donor felicitation programmes and many more. The hospital has recently received various industry awards for healthcare delivery, innovation and technology. The institution’s focus has always been to provide a patient-centric healthcare experience that allows access to the best doctors and technology at an affordable cost.
Leveraging Technology
The hospital has an online platform for patients, wherein after booking an appointment, patients can make a payment for the same online and when they come to the Hospital, they can print the voucher through the iosks which are placed on the P floors. The diagnostic reports have been made available online for the patients. Patients can now access the reports at their convenience and print a copy. Hospital has implemented an online portal for patients to provide feedback. ur blood bank software has been implemented to streamline the process flow in the blood bank department and automate the management and tracking of the entire blood transfusion cycle - from product receipt to compatibility verification to patient transfusion. The e-Workflow is an initiative taken to eliminate use of paper for few administrative processes. This has been implemented across all departments of the Hospital.
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Industry Profile
Mahatma Gandhi University of Medical Science & Technology Name Surendr Singh Designation Sr Manager Organisation Mahatma Gandhi University Medical Science & Technology, Jaipur Website www.mgumst.org
Transforming Medical Infrastructure
A
n increased adoption of telemedicine, Hospital Information System (HIS), Electronic Health Records (EHR), mHealth, and web-based services has made digital patient data expand, rapidly transforming medical technology and the availability of technology diagnostic and therapeutic equipment together with changing practice pattern of doctors has revolutionised the way healthcare is being delivered today. Today, medical institutions can store medical images and patient records as electronically, which can be instantly compared to previous images. Today, patient care experiences are top of the mind in the healthcare industry across the globe. Technology is able to modernise medical care, reduce costs, avoid duplicate tests and mechanics manual processes.
Connecting Healthcare via IT
People and patient are getting benefited by IT. People are using Android and iOS apps for health care tips and they are learning symptoms and expert methods to prevent diseases. octor and patients are also using social networks to answer queries of their patients and also to maintain a friendly relationship with his patients. Many types of painful treatment methods are reduced as new machines and procedures are being introduced using IT. Let’s consider the example of Endobronchial Ultrasound test, it became very easy for doctors to distinguish between T.B. and lung cancer and there is no need of incision to confirm cancer now. This is ust an example how technology has modified the working of doctors to give better and healthy life to their patients.
IT Investments
We have started telemedicine center for improv improving rural healthcare with fully digital medical equipment and telemedicine EHR salutation. We are established a full-fledged flesh epartment of Telemedicine and Health Informatics. Simultaneously, we started e-Library for medical students. In future, we are going to start a PBX in my hospital for direct interaction with rural patient and doctor without telemedicine room. In future, we are going to adopt EHR, PACS, mHealth, and webbased services for making digital patient data. In the future, I wish to make a fully paperless hospital.
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Industry Profile
Dr Lal Path Labs Name Munender Soperna Designation CIO Organisation Dr Lal PathLabs, New Delhi Website www.lalpathlabs.com
Transforming Medical Infrastructure
L
eadership in diagnostics, through technology and innovation excellence in diagnostics, is our mantra. Dr Lal PathLabs Limited is one of India’s leading consumer healthcare brands in diagnostic services. It has an integrated nationwide network, where patients and healthcare providers are offered a broad range of diagnostic and related healthcare tests and services for use in core testing, patient diagnosis and prevention, monitoring and treatment of disease and other health conditions. The services of LPL are aimed at individual patients, hospitals and other healthcare providers and corporates. The catalogue of services includes 1,110 test panels, 1,934 pathology tests and 1,561 radiology and cardiology tests.
Leveraging Technology
Dr Lal Pathlabs, one of the oldest and the leading diagnostic chains in India, offers diverse solutions for patients via Information Technology. They offer patients a broad range of diagnostic and health-related tests. IT has become the backbone of the diagnostic centre right from the reports of patients, bills, SMS and email services to the patients. IT enables us to provide better connectivity to patients and improve delivery.
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Organisation Profile
Dr Lal PathLabs Limited is one of India’s leading consumer healthcare brands in diagnostic services. It has an integrated nationwide network, where patients and healthcare providers are offered a broad range of diagnostic and related
healthcare tests and services for use in core. testing, patient diagnosis and the prevention, monitoring and treatment of disease and other health conditions. The services of LPL are aimed at individual patients, hospitals and other healthcare providers and corporates. The catalogue of services includes 1,110 test panels, 1,934 pathology tests and 1,561 radiology and cardiology tests.
Industry Profile
Philips Innovation Campus Name Ravi Ramaswamy Designation Sr Director & Head - Health Systems Organisation Philips Innovation Campus, Bangalore Website www.bangalore.philips.com
Transforming Medical Infrastructure
I
have been fortunate to be a part of this sun rise industry over the past 30 plus years and track its growth from very close quarters. During the late 80s – early 90s, proliferation of PCs led to the emergence of connected products as also IT into the Healthcare system. It started with Billing and operations management, followed by device interconnections, documentation and imaging, data capture and repository. The convergence of digital and information technologies saw a huge leap – in enabling diverse applications like Clinical Decision support systems, assisted interpretation, big data & analytics. Come in mobility and we now see social media driving healthcare behaviors as also health care dispensation. It would be a very fair statement to say that IT has transformed the way patient care is managed. Whether it be in the field of wellness, prevention, diagnosis, investigations, treatment, documentation, retrieval of information, access to state of the art knowledge, medical instrumentation, teaching or research, IT has made its presence felt. We are now on a path to reduce the gaps between the “haves” and the “have-not”. The combination of biology, genetics, digital technologies and empirical analysis will drive personalised medicine. The future is left to imagination.
Connecting Healthcare via ICT
IT brings along with it many advantages. It will level the playing field. It helps transcends the gap between expertise availability and need. It will also help in the decongestion of tertiary care centers and enhance foot falls at the primary or secondary care centers – thereby helping doctors manage their patients based on their acuity. Three major issues plaguing the healthcare sector is cost, quality and access. IT should help in enhancing productivity on all the three axes. The current scenario demands an immediate emphasis be laid on preventive healthcare.
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Shift in Perception
Practitioners have begun to see the benefits of IT. In the present day environment, IT is a way of life. Mobile phones, tablets and Internet have redefined the way we live and engage. This has also acted like a catalyst in driving behavior changes in healthcare systems. Ecosystem does put a tremendous pressure on the hospitals to embrace IT. The move from product thinking to solution thinking as also serving the customers over the care continuum is enabled by integrating IT into their way of working. They see tangible benefits in the form of improved patient care, labour reduction, improved quality and consistency.
Way Forward
The convergence of IT and healthcare is both a boon and a bane. Information and communication technologies (ICTs) have great potential to address some of the challenges faced by us in providing accessible, cost effective, highquality health care services. Telemedicine helps overcome geographical barriers and increase access to health care services. This is particularly beneficial for semi urban, rural and underserved communities – groups that traditionally suffer from lack of access to health care. IT will be the force multiplier in the decentralisation process of healthcare.
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Exclusive Interview
HSCC’s Journey Continues for Restructuring Health Infrastructure Gyanesh Pandey, Chairman & Managing Director, HSCC (India) Ltd, shares how strengthening of IT infrastructure has become a strategic imperative, in an exclusive interview to Souvik Goswami, Elets News Network( ENN) Could you sum up HSCC’s journey during last three decades? HSCC was set up in 1983 with a modest capital base of `40 lakh with an objective to be a market leader in providing innovative, high quality knowledge based services in health and social sectors. Its initial offerings were primarily conducting feasibility studies and preparation of related reports. However, realizing that the health sector needs were diverse in nature and that country’s health infrastructure was grossly inadequate, the company took to Design and Engineering, further expanding the organization. With the expansion of Company’s business, its capital base was increased to `160 lakh in 2004-05 and to `240 lakh in 2008-09. Since inception, HSCC has been involved in building and designing and more than 100 hospitals across the Country. It is also associated with NRHM activities in several states. The company today is engaged in rendering comprehensive range of professional consultancy services including hospital plan-
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ning, design, detail engineering, project management and monitoring as also procurement, supply, installation & commissioning of medical equipment for the projects its undertakes.
What are the challenges and opportunities for HSCC? A plethora of challenges exist for the organization that includes: l Competition amongst other PSUs. l Reduction in fee due to more competition. l Decline in procurement assignments. l Attrition of experienced staff. l Handling projects in North-East at a comparatively low fee with longer gestation period.
Exclusive Interview
Opportunities Expansion and up gradation of existing health infrastructure (Hospitals, Educational Institutions) l New Hospital, medical colleges and other institutions. l Extending current range of services to other sectors. l l
As domestic demand increases do you think more institutions like HSCC should be established in India? While establishment of more such institutions would promote healthy completion, new institutions however would require gestation period.
What are the new offering from your company? As a diversification measure, HS ’s new offering is to provide operation & maintenance services of the buildings designed & engineered by its hospital, waste management and computerization of hospitals. We are also exploring the possibility of setting up of diagnostic centres in India & across the globe.
How did you achieve this status? This has been rendered possible by planning ahead, remaining sharply focused and building specialization
ficult times by converting adversities into opportunities that has left the company well positioned, reflected by its performance in the years gone by. HS is a profit making PS with a positive net worth continuously for last 29 years that has made HSCC achieve the status of Mini Ratna, as per the DPE guidelines.
What is the way forward? Looking ahead, with the increase in government spending on healthcare towards strengthening of infrastructure, including skills enhancement and introduction of Universal Health Coverage, the services offered by us will stand us in good stead. However, there
Looking ahead, with the increase in government spending on healthcare towards strengthening of infrastructure, including skills enhancement and introduction of Universal Health Coverage, the services offered by us will stand us in good stead thereby creating differentiation to compete effectively. We are also looking to strengthen the corporate governance, pursuing business development aggressively and streamline our processes. It has been our ability to build an agile organization that has enabled us to adopt and navigate through dif-
are challenges, like talent pool and skill enhancement that we are conscious of and are high on agenda. In today’s business environment, IT has emerged as game changer and strengthening of IT infrastructure has become a strategic imperative. In fact, it will be the key to how we innovate and expand our
business along with retaining our competitive edge.
ould you tell brie y you are executing in India and abroad? Presently, HSCC is executing hospital projects worth approximately `10,000 cr. across the country – both for and on behalf of MOH&FW and the State Governments.
What, according to you, will it take to make this programme successful? The ‘Digital India’ programme is a Rs 1 lakhs crore programme that envisages providing digital infrastructure alongwith high-speed internet as utility and seamlessly integrate all departments, delivering services to public including health, education and financial services. This will make it possible to provide broadband and phones, wi-fi etc., in all Institutions-Schools & Universities, Hospitals etc., alongwith imparting training.
How will it impact different stakeholder in the health sector? The company is gearing for this and will be able to render connectivity and related IT services to healthcare institutions. This would facilitate providing e-health, use tele-medicine and enable healthcare even in remote areas for the benefit of the poor.
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Exclusive Interview
‘Patient Centricity’ as Driver of
Health Industry
Shubhanshu Joshi plays the twin role of resultdriven oint M E at Life Science Vision roup. A true technology enthusiast at heart and a healthcare entrepreneur by profession, Joshi talks about his global venture LSV Group, its products and plans in an interview with T Radhakrishna of Elets News Network (ENN) Elaborate your business vision for Life Science Vision Group. LSV Group is a leading international healthcare technology service and solution provider, serving clients in over 20 countries, including Europe, America and Asia Pacific. onceptualised in the corridors of niversity ollege ondon in 2009, formally incorporated in 2013, the group is in the forefront of developing networking platforms, which serve as an interface for new ways of communication and transaction between multiple stakeholders (patients, H Ps and providers) in the healthcare industry and dashboard solutions bridging gaps in the life science and pharmaceutical industry. We do our activities in six business segments – health tech solutions, digital healthcare and medical communications, software solutions (Pharma and Life Science, exclusively), consulting services, media, conferences and publications, and Research and Analytics (high-end predictive analytics for Pharma, R s and biotech). Also, LSV Group (under its venture arm) has created India’s first startup studio for digital healthcare and
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Exclusive Interview
life science companies. Working on a builder agency-led business model, we often conceptualise, develop and seedfund new pro ects. Selected growth ideas are then spun-out under different corporate entities during 2015-16 fiscal: oyen, Healthacto, Movemeds, Blackboard Health, Digimedx, Digipeutics and igbox Health are are some of our new pro ects.
How do you position your services? We started our journey as a pure play healthcare technology services provider and later established India’s first and leading startup studio in the field of healthcare and life science industry. We conceptualise, develop, fund and scale high-growth potential ideas into commercially scalable businesses creating unmatched value for our investors, stakeholders and users. uilding on our success starting individual companies, we have created a place where multiple ideas and teams are nurtured through the seed stage and then to debut as independent startups. We strongly believe that with the help of technology, we can make healthcare more effective for patients with medical conditions. ur companies provide patients with meaningful information to help manage their condition and provide H Ps unprecedented insight into patient’s medication taking and daily habits so right intervention can be made to achieve the desired health outcome.
Which are the industries you focus on? How do you differentiate your expertise? The entire healthcare & life science ecosystem is striving to achieve a sustainable competitive advantage by adopting technological advances such as Big Data, cloud, mobility, social media, predictive analytics and digitalisation, which are leading to simplified operating environments despite the constantly changing and evolving regulatory ecosystem. Patient centricity� is driving the life sciences and
healthcare industry, leading to an enhanced collaboration amongst life science companies, healthcare IT service providers and payer organisations. Leading the way is Life Science Vision Group as your trusted and valued business partner. Healthcare: At LSV Group, we apply our strength as leading international integrated healthcare services provider to deliver solutions, unlock value and propel growth in the industry. We are driven by the passion of excellence in healthcare services and the idea of creating a highly trusted network of companies, which focus on delivering affordable and accessible quality healthcare for all. We invest in ideas in the healthcare sector, develop and market them. This will bring change in
produce high value eco-friendly biobased chemicals from renewable feed stocks at lab scale, which have similar chemical characteristics as their petroleum counterparts.
What is the USP of your products? How do they help the ecosystem of healthcare? We are rolling out some of our products in a phased manner during . They include Healthacto, Doyen, Movemeds, ocmesh, iabacto and idHealthacto. Healthacto is a fully integrated healthcare information and education network which works as a single interface for multiple transactions and conversations among multiple stakeholders involved with chronic disease management. It empowers patients to better
Patient centricity is driving the life sciences and healthcare industry, leading to an enhanced collaboration amongst life science companies, healthcare IT service providers and payer organisations. Leading the way is Life Science Vision Group as your trusted and valued business partner the way we deal with healthcare. The solutions we provide reflect insights generated by our diverse global network of consultants and industry experts. ur in-depth domain expertise ensures our capability to deliver on our commitments. Above all, we have made it our first priority to serve needs of healthcare end users. This commitment is reflected in our culture that values integrity, professionalism and a passion for excellence. Life Sciences (Industrial Biotechnology): We are passionate about how big data can help life science companies to innovate and progress at a faster pace. We are in process of establishing I ( enter of iotechnology Innovation) with Fermentek Biotechnology with a leading Indian academic institute, whereas our first project we will be exploring options to
manage their conditions by providing them highly curated tools over the web and mobile platforms. It is managed by our spin-off concern Healthacto Technologies. oyen is a fully integrated digital healthcare and wellness clinic exclusively for women. ocmesh.com is a subscription free online practice management tool designed by doctors for doctors. iabacto.com is desktop web and i S app designed and developed to serve patients suffering from Type-I iabetes. idHealthacto.com is an interactive online portal for paediatric patients suffering from different life threatening therapeutic conditions. This is being developed by our spin off DigiMedX and will work as a digital education resource for kids so they can easily understand their conditions and follow their medication regime in a better manner.
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Exclusive Interview
Since Trivector has been a pioneer in the field of infertility in India. How did it all start?
Trivector Gets First Mover Advantage Dilip Patil, Managing Partner, Trivector Biomed LLP founded the Group in 1993 by establishing a company Trivector Scientific International with the vision of addressing the needs of the stakeholders in the area of infertility. In an interaction with the enthusiastic entrepreneur, Kartik Sharma of Elets News Network (ENN) discovers the journey of a young boy from a remote village in Maharashtra, who went on to become the Managing Partner of one of the first companies to work in the field of infertility in India
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I was working with a company as a Service Manager, but I always dreamt of starting something of my own. After a long wait, I got the opportunity to start a company of my own. I started my first company called the Scientific Service Syndicate, which had a small shared office space. Soon, the need for more people was felt and a few former colleagues readily agreed to help me widen the base. Within six months, there was remarkable progress and we were in talks to bag a big agency contract from ISR . ut the Scientific Service Syndicate was a proprietorship concern, which made us realise that we need a new company with a better name since we were getting associated with bigger agencies. So, I along with two of my colleagues, after brainstorming on alot of names, came up with ‘Trivector’. The three of us after brainstorming about a lot of names, settled on Trivector and the logo was designed during our train journey back home. That’s how Trivector Group was born.
Tell us more about the first big success and the first big challenge of the company? ur first success came in the form of an agency of a British company. We participated in the tendering process and arranged the deposit amount through loan, and finally bagged the order. It was a challenging time as we didn’t exactly have enough resources, but we knew the coming days were going to be better. The second agency that we got was of Supermax Ra or ompany, but the challenges were far from over. We received a fax that the company, whose agency we possessed, had gone bankrupt. This was our first biggest challenged that made my colleagues turn hostile towards the company. Trivec-
Exclusive Interview
tor took around a year to come out of this shock.
earlier, there was no process in place for importing it. Another problem was that the shelf life of that product was only 17 days, which made it necessary to be distributed at the earliest. Eventually, we had to abandon the media and the orders were a waste. DHL refused to help us clear it and so did all the other private clearing agents, as they would not deal with perishable products. Eventually, we found an agent who said this will have to be brought in by direct delivery process, for which the paper work had to be done earlier and was a three-month time consuming process. We had to talk to R I authorities to finally set up a process to bring this product in the market. As the pioneers, we had to set up this process. Today, 12 companies are selling this product in the market and all are following the process we set up initially.
What was the breakthrough for Trivector in the field of Healthcare? Encouragement and support of two people actually was the reason for Trivector to enter the field of I F. This was a time when only five I F centres existed and fertility field was ust opening up in India. ne of the clinics was already my client. Dr Sheryas Padgaokar was a doctor who had come from Australia to complete his fellowship and was suggested by my I F centre client to contact me for his need of machinery. Dr Padgaokar wanted a supplier of embryo free er and asked me for help. There was a company in Australia which would provide this and after I contacted them, they were not keen to enter in to India. Everybody had a mindset as to why a large, populated
Our first success came in the form of an agency of a British company. We participated in the tendering process and arranged the deposit amount through loan, and finally bagged the order country like India would need I F. So, we had to fight this mindset and eventually we won the non-exclusive agency of that company. Another person, Dr Madhuri Patil from Sangli had attended a training seminar in Singapore where she came across a readymade culture media being used. She told us about the product supplied by a Danish company which will be of great use in Indian markets. We faced some problem in getting the agency of this company, but eventually succeeded. The first order was given to Dr Padgaokar and it was successfully delivered maintaining the cold storage chain. And, this is how Trivector got this breakthrough in the field of Healthcare and I F.
Being a pioneer in a particular field has its own advantages and disadvantages. What has been your experience? The readymade culture media was a product unheard in the Indian markets, and since we could successfully deliver it, we started getting lots of orders for the same. As the si e of the orders grew, the complications in the transport also grew in the same proportion. When we placed an order of around 1,000 media cultures, it had to be sent by a cargo via DHL. DHL told us that the product was detained as the chemical analysis of the product was needed along with quarantine certificate and a lot of documents. Since nobody had ordered such products
What other diversions did the Trivector Group take apart from servicing the healthcare sector? nce we started adding more and more products to our menu, we realised that we need to train our customers with the proper utilisation of the products. So, we started by sending a few of them to openhagen niversity to know about the products and attend the training programmes. Then we set up a training centre in collaboration with the openhagen niversity. We started the Trivector Fertility School in , which was first of its kind in India. As this training school progressed, we realised that we keep on needing sperm samples. The only option back then was to either get animal sperms, which was difficult, or to purchase real sperms from the sperm banks. Soon, it dawned on us that these sample purchased from the sperms banks were adulterated and not of good quality. That’s how the sperm bank of Trivector Group came into existence.
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Spotlight
The Indian market has low awareness of Aortic and Peripheral Vascular (APV) therapy with only around 40-60 vascular surgeons performing endovascular surgeries as their primary procedure for patients says, Tony Semedo, Senior Vice President, Medtronic & President, Aortic & Peripheral Vascular, Medtronic in conversation with Romiya Das of Elets News Networks (ENN)
Connecting
Advanced Medical Technologies to Patients How do you see Aortic and Peripheral Vascular disease burden in India? An aortic aneurysm is among the top 10 leading cause of death in the US and it generally affects the ageing population. India has no statistical evidence on the prevalence of this disease but going by US statistics, it affects about one per cent of the population above 60 years of one or more risk factors such as smoking, hypertension, age
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(men over 60; women over 65) suffering from coronary artery disease, already undergone Coronary artery Bypass Grafting (CABG), family history of an aneurysm. Since this disease is asymptomatic before rupture, a majority of patients are undiagnosed. Peripheral Vascular Disease (PVD) in diabetes is complicated by peripheral neuropathy and susceptibility to infection, which leads to foot ulceration, gangrene and amputation of the
affected extremity. The PVD affects 10 million people in India and more than 202 million people worldwide. In fact, India labeled as the diabetic capital of the world and there is a strong correlation between PAD and diabetes. Patients suffering from diabetes tend to develop PAD as they grow older and the condition aggravates if they are already suffering from CHD or are smokers. Other statistics include - it is estimated that 20-30 per cent of diabetic patients over 65 years of age have the peripheral arterial disease; approximately 30 per cent of these diabetic patients with PVD require surgical or percutaneous revascularisation. 10 per cent require an amputation of the affected limb within 5-10 years of diagnosis; one-third of all diabetic patients have significant peripheral neuropathy and/or PVD; 40 per cent patients of coronary artery
Spotlight
disease have associated peripheral vascular disease. In spite of these statistics, these therapies are significantly under-penetrated as patients associate limb ischemia with old age and do not seek treatment. lobally venous insufficiency affects more than 192 million people and is common in women who have had two or more pregnancies. CVI disease has risk factors that include age, pregnancy, obesity, extended periods of standing and sitting. This is a new and emerging therapy in India. Some of the key symptoms include varicose veins, leg pain, aching, or cramping, leg or ankle swelling, leg heaviness and fatigue, skin changes or rashes, ulcers, open wounds, or sores.
What challenges and opportunities do you see in Indian APV therapy market? Some of the key challenges in the AVP therapy market include low awareness for aortic; peripheral and endovenous therapies as the diseases generally affect older adults, access to health insurance coverage; lack of proper screening protocol for patients; lack of adequate infrastructure. A very few hospitals in India have a dedicated catheterisation lab or Operating Room (OR) for aortic endovascular repairs to be performed; scarcity of skilled physicians and doctors. Since many vascular surgeons do not have the opportunity to perform endovascular procedures, the majority of procedures are performed with open surgical. Therefore, there are only around 40-60 vascular surgeons in India who perform endovascular surgeries as their primary procedure for patients.
What is new in India regarding the APV business? Two years ago, Medtronic introduced drug-coated balloons to treat peripheral vascular disease located in the lower extremities, specifically claudication within the Superficial Femoral Artery
(SFA) in India. We continue to work on raising awareness of claudication and the ability for drug-coated balloons to alleviate the symptoms with this disease and minimise the number of re-interventions in order to treat it. Given the high prevalence of diabetes in India there also is a very high prevalence of PAD found in the vessels below the knee ( T ). We are currently working on developing a specifically designed for the vessels BTK. After regulatory approval, we would commercialise the DCB for the BTK in India and other commercialised markets where we have a presence. These efforts involve significant investments in clinical studies to demonstrate efficacy and product safety. In addition, we will also continue our investment in registry studies
tive in more than 280,000 patients globally. Our mission is to improve patient outcome and our commitment is to build and invest in complementary innovative technology that will allow physicians to treat more complex aortic disease. Peripheral vascular therapies Medtronic offers one of the most robust product portfolios for the treatment of peripheral vascular disease, PVD. This includes drug-coated balloons (DCB), atherectomy, stents, PTA balloons, and a wide variety of accessories to aid the delivery of therapy. hronic venous insufficiencyThe losureFast procedure is an endovascular procedure featuring segmental ablation.
Medtronic will be investing in training and education programs to increase public awareness of all three therapy franchises present in India, including peripheral vascular disease, aortic and endovenous disease. Medtronic also plans to train about 200 physicians over the next several years to evaluate patients in the real-world patient population. Medtronic will be investing in training and education programs to increase public awareness of all three therapy franchises present in India, including peripheral vascular disease, aortic and endovenous disease. Medtronic also plans to train about 200 physicians over the next several years.
Elaborate on Medtronic’s APV therapies portfolio? Aortic vascular therapies - Leveraging decades of clinical experiences and data, Medtronic’s core technologies for treating abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA) and descending thoracic disease, the product lines Endurant and Valiant have been proven effec-
How do you see the role of information technology in the healthcare sector? Over the past decades, advancement in the medical sector and procedural techniques has redefined the face of healthcare. Medical device technologies have enhanced the quality and effectiveness of healthcare for millions of patients worldwide. Pacemakers, drug coated balloons, implantable cardioverter defibrillators, coronary drug eluting stents, and non-invasive diagnosis with ultrasound technology are some of the examples of the products that are available today because of the continuous medical technology innovation. Medical technology extends and improves life, alleviates pain and restores health.
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Special Feature
Pharma Sector Gets Tech Push The pharmaceutical industry has realised the need to move up the IT scale and the implementation goes on at a never-before pace. Automation of all hitherto manual operations is adding speed to the overall functioning of the sector. Right from the stage of research and development to numerous purchases to production to distribution — everything is getting digitised for ensuring smooth functioning of pharmaceutical units and improving efficiency, accuracy and decision making, writes Romiya Das of Elets News Network (ENN)
T
he Indian pharmaceutical industry is third-largest in terms of volume and 13th largest in value. While the India exports are expected to account for 72 per cent of the total pharma production, in terms of value, it is likely to reach US$40 billion by 2020, according to latest reports. Out of US$40 billion, 70 per cent of the revenue is expected to come from generic drugs, 21 per cent from overthe-counter sale of drugs and the rest from patented drugs. Currently, India has the secondhighest number of the US Food and
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Drug Administration (FDA)-approved manufacturing units, only after the US, and accounts for 22 per cent of overall USFDA-approved facilities. The industry is fragmented among more than 20,000 manufacturing units spread in the organised as well as unorganised segments. To reduce manual work, facilitate faster documentation and to beat the competition by reaching the market in minimum possible time, an urgent need for implementation of information technology tools was felt by the pharmaceutical sector. Accordingly, various IT applications are being
used in this domain to connect with clinicians, prevent medication errors, store and retrieve pharma data, and data analytics is applied. There are applications such as Computerised Physician Order Entry (CPOE), Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS), Customer Relationship Management System (CRMS), Sales Force Automation (SFA), Electronic Batch Records (eBR) and many more. These applications have specific functioning areas that help in storing, maintaining and analysing data related to the specific functional area.
Special Feature
CPOE includes both in-patient orders and electronic ordering of outpatient prescriptions referred to as e-prescribing. With this, both physicians and care-givers can give orders directly into the computer, thereby eliminating problems with writing legibility and order transcription. It allows physicians to make better clinical decisions based on patients’ e-records. It also helps in online verification of the pharmacist, computerised warnings of drug allergies, automated label generation, etc. The ERP system integrates all the data and processes of an organisation reducing information silos in various departments. It facilitates flow of information between all business functions inside the boundaries of the organisation and manage connections with external stakeholders. ERP consists of various modules, such as production and inventory management, weighing and dispensing, e-batch and e-packaging records, financial accounting, personnel management, and training and development. To manage the information flow within a lab, LIMS can be made use of for connecting the lab with the rest of the organisation. LIMS automates lab processes to increase productivity, efficiency, and quality analysis. It helps from sample request to sample registration, sample collection, automatic calculations of tests methods, specification maintenance, assigning properties to those tests,
recording results, generating reports, issuing COAs, et al. e R software is required for the online management of batch manufacturing and packaging records. It converts bulky documentation work into the centralised automatic version. It aggregates data from across various silos of stored information and contextualises it into one consolidated record for the lot produced. A complete churning of the pharma industry is taking place through IT, in keeping with the varying requirements of the global market. India being the third-largest manufacturer, the pharma companies here must adapt themselves to overcome the challenges, such as compliance issues and good manufacturing practices. Certain other
IT in Pharma Industry Computerised Physician Order Entry (CPOE) Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS), Customer Relationship Management System (CRMS) Sales Force Automation (SFA) Electronic Batch Records (eBR) Clinical Trial Management System (CTMS) Corrective Action and Preventive Action (CAPA) Distributed Control System (DCS) Computerised Maintenance Management System (CMMS)
To reduce manual work, facilitate faster documentation and to beat the competition by reaching the market in minimum possible time, an urgent need for implementation of information technology tools was felt by the pharmaceutical sector challenges like a highly fragmented industry with an overloaded market of generic drug manufacturers, low-profit margins due to government pricing policy, and low input for research and development due to the pricing norms can also be better addressed with enhanced application of information technology tools. Having said that, what needs to be added is that the
industry needs stronger IP regulations to channelise its potential. The pharma companies are recognising the efficiency of a digitised ecosystem, and realising the importance of Big Data. The industry is also moving towards cloud technology to fulfil the desired requirement of the life sciences, also to overcome the IP and security issues, and also to reduce the operating costs. Additionally, there is also an increasing realisation about how the social media presence is impacting its customers. An apparent paradigm shift can be seen with the advancement as well as adoption of IT applications in this sector. There are numerous technology solutions which can trigger the growth of the industry, including Big Data and Analytics, which can play a vital role in identifying the best target and costeffective therapies.
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Industry Speak
Adopt IT for Care and Cure Healthcare industry is growing at a rapid pace and it has become one of the largest sectors which has started to adopt IT, and putting it to optimum use is necessary, Ramakanth Desai, CEO, Curespring, tells Elets News Network (ENN) How do you see adoption of IT in hospitals? Nearly 30 to 40 per cent of hospitals have adopted basic HIS mostly in western and southern part of the coutnry. But they are mostly used for basic back office administration functions like patient registration/ billing etc. Hospitals have to start adopting technology for care and cure, to reduce the patient revisits and increased access for specialists and start adopting various IT apps for diagnosis. Next generation PACS/ HIS & LIS will have to be adopted. HIS has to be adopted from patient care perspective than billing perspective. There is a need for automating workflow and integrating labs so that manual errors in recording the tests results have to be avoided and also reduce the cycles for patient care. Hospitals need to use technology for optimum use of specialist’s time. Outpatients EHR/EMR is not there in most hospitals and this has to be made mandatory.
Elaborate utility of Next Gen PACS/HIS & LIS? All next generation platforms will become more doctor, patient and evidence based. The platforms will start various differentiated care
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needs. Next generation PACS will address specialists needs– For example -Lesion management System in accordance to industry standards (RECIST), Consistent oncology image reporting. Next Gen PACS will cater to all specialties, including gastro, ophthalmology, dermatology, pathology. Adoption of HIS will help doctor to doctor collaboration platforms, doctor to patient interaction platform and third party apps for various diagnosis and care. Next Gen HIS will be more patient care centric than billing centric for example - visual and auditory warning systems are generated in the event of abnormal test results. It will address ecosystem integration needs, support automated patient data transfers between departments and institutions, enable graphic or digitised diagnostic images and integration with the inpatient case sheet. Implementation of LIS will start focusing on automated data capture and medical device integration to reduce manual errors in reporting.
Ramakanth Desai CEO, Curespring
and specialist to specialist online consultation can be facilitated. IT can help in creating clinic information systems. General physicians can have access on databases like pharma, patient case history). Continuous education is a must for many general physicians. CME programs are not reaching even 10 per cent of doctors in remote areas. Using IT health consciousness can be enhanced need for prevention than cure. Cost of logistics can be reduced considerably using telecare platforms such as Curespring.
Where do you see Curespring in the coming times?
How can IT help in the remote healthcare delivery?
Our Vision is to enable 5000 remote tele clinics with access to specialist care in the next four years. Deploy our HIS for hospitals with extensions of doctor to doctor collaboration, doctor to patient interaction platform, hospital performance enhancement around care parameters and third party apps for diagnostics. Deploy our PACS system to launch image enabled EMR/EHR.
IT can help in connecting general physician access to specialist knowledge. Physician to specialist
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Startup
Genomics Turns New Paradigm in Healthcare With spiraling cases of diabetes, cancer and stroke, there is a huge scope for genomics industry, as it drives preventive healthcare. Positive Bioscience, a three-year-old company focuses on personal genomics and cancer genomics products
P
ositive Bioscience started by Samarth Jain in October 2012 in association with Bapsy Jain, and Dr Meetha Medhora has already opened three personal genomics clinics and plans to launch more than 200 personalised genetic testing facilities across the country over a span of three years. “In 2011, while I was working at Wall Street, I was introduced to advances in genomics. Its potential in healthcare was obvious. To make this available in India was the driving force for setting up the company. The company was founded in October 2012. The objective of the company is to help identify people at risk of chronic diseases, assist them in making necessary lifestyle changes and to help live healthy and productive lives,” Jain said. The company focuses on two major products - Personal Genomics for healthy individuals and the test looks for genetic mutations that can predict the risk of several diseases in healthy individuals. Similarly, our cancer genomics test looks at mutations which can help a doctor to select the optimum course of treatment for treating the patients’ cancer. “Currently, the healthcare model in our country is primarily focused on treatment rather than prevention. This approach has several drawbacks like increased treatment costs, higher mortality rates, lack of effective care etc. Genomics is the new paradigm which helps to identify the risk of a
Dr Samarth Jain, CEO & Co-Founder, Positive Bioscience Ltd particular disease or several diseases in a patient but also help clinicians to personalise a treatment plan depending on the genetic information of the patient. Our products help an individual understand their health at a molecular level gives them necessary recommendations to reduce their risk for diseases and also advises a personalised treatment strategy. Thus, genetic testing not only gives a person the opportunity to be more informed about their own health but also be an active participant in the management of their diseases or treatment plan which can effectively cut down cost and improve care,” he said. The USP of the Positive BioScience is that they employ tools like big data analytics, artificial intelligence (AI) and advanced machine learning techniques to correlate the genetic profiles, the drugs received and sur-
vival outcomes. Positive BioScience as developed its own AI computing platform called Positive Intelligence which scans through every drug available for cancer and then categorizes them depending on their response levels in the body. This helps and suggests drugs which have the most likelihood of success in treating the patient. “Being an Economics graduate from University of Illinois, UrbanaChampaign, USA impressed by the way genomics was improving outcomes in cancer and a firm passion for technology is what led me to start Positive Bioscience,” Jain informed. Talking about the challenges Jain informed that in 2012, not a single doctor he met knew about genomic tests. Very few people in the pharmaceutical market were aware of genomics and its implications in the healthcare sector. “The genetic testing market is still in its infancy in India. Majority of the population is still unaware of the availability of these tests. Even at the market level, the biggest hurdle is lack of knowledge and availability of skilled labour in the genomics field. This even causes problem for recruiting people. Both, people and doctors need to be educated to increase the adoption of such cutting edge genetic tests,” Jain said. Positive Bioscience also aims to expand in the cancer genomics space and wish to sequence 2 in every 10 cancer patients in the next three years in the country. On the personal genomics front, the company is planning to partner with more than 200 big hospitals to start personal genomics centres. The company believes that this move will not only help to monitor disease pattern but provide an elaborate view of the healthcare scenario, nationwide. “We are very excited with the potential of genomics in contributing to the healthcare of India. We have just begun, and we will continuously evolve to make the best genomic testing available in India,” he added.
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Startup
On Pricing Transparency
Quest in Healthcare Lack of price transparency in Indian healthcare in one of the biggest hurdles. Bridging this gap, LetsMD, an online venture started by Engineer duo provides an avenue for patients to connect with ethical healthcare service providers
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etsMD aims to reduce the commission system prevalent in hospitals in India by bringing transparency in healthcare outlets in pricing as well as quality and doctor selection process. It helps patients make an informed healthcare choice and provides pricing packages for a wide range of elective procedures across top hospitals and then connects a prospective patient directly to the hospital. The online venture found in November 2015 by Nivesh Khandelwal and Prakhar Gupta is one of its kind that give access to consumers to pricing of various hospitals in a clean and transparent user interface. Besides procedures, they also provide a detailed listing of free camps happening in a city and patients can register directly for the same without having to call up the hospitals. Besides procedures, LetsMD also provides a detailed listing of free camps happening in a city, enabling
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MARCH / 2016 ehealth.eletsonline.com
Nivesh Khandelwal Co-Founder
Prakhar Gupta Co-Founder patients to register directly for the same without calling up the hospitals. “A patient should also access information about hospitals, doctors, diagnostic chains etc., and make an informed selection without having to go through middlemen and LetsMD hopes to enable that,” informs Khandelwal.
The company’s biggest challenge was to get reputed hospital chains’ consent to display their pricing on a new web-based platform. “Organised healthcare still being a nascent industry in India, it is primarily doctor driven. Most hospital chains are focused on creating a brand that can be bigger than the doctor and are very conscious about the pedigree of the partners they take on board,” he said. He informed that LetsMD’s main focus is to provide a transparent market place for surgeries in India where people can compare hospitals on pricing and clinical outcomes. “Currently a referring doctor is taken on face value by patients and in a lot of cases the doctor refers the patient to the hospital providing the maximum commission. LetsMD aims to reduce the commission system prevalent in hospital/doctor selection process,” Khandelwal said. The company, which currently has six employees aims to consolidate its offering in Delhi-NCR and is trying to expand up to Bengaluru and Mumbai in Q3 of FY 17. ver the next five years, we hope to make LetsMD indispensable for a patient going for an elective surgery in India. We hope to introduce a new word to a patient’s vocabulary like Google did,” he added. IT is enabling quicker access to information and reducing information asymmetry, he said adding that consumers today are much more informed than a decade ago and hospital systems needs to be upgraded to treat and manage a well-informed consumer. “From a hospital’s standpoint, IT has enabled more efficient communication between a patient and a doctor by making booking OPDs, storing medical records, treating and managing diseases easier and more convenient. Moreover, an advancement in telemedicine, coupled with efficient IT systems, has ensured healthcare is accessible to a wider population than was possible earlier,” he added.
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