Pandemic Pivots

MIND 'n' MATTER

Given that the mind defines our behaviours, and the matters that drive it, our environment becomes one of the most important factors of our well-being. The Pandemic has affected our environment in unprecedented ways, and although it is not the first or the last time such an event shook the world, it has definitely been one of the most impactful and definitive, because of the global nature of the impact. The mental being of humanity as a whole has become one of the most critical pivots of the current pandemic.

Gurrit K Sethi, Strategic Advisor, Global Health Services, Global Strategic Analysis

The pandemic has affected our lives in multifarious ways that we are still trying to ascertain, still trying to bounce back from, and ways that have left us wondering how we can transform our society for the better. Given the changed behaviours in response to a changed environment during the pandemic, various facets of life have also evolved including how we interact, how we work, how we move around, how we conduct our business, and, most of all, of how we view our health. Our health has suddenly become a key focus including our own and others perceptions of individual health. Try sneezing in a public place today and the heads that turn with ‘the look’ tell you just that! Alongside physical health, mental health and well-being has also now taken on a new dimension.

In a world where mental health always played second fiddle to priorities like work, physical health, aesthetics, etc., the COVID-19 pandemic served as a wake-up call to many. The pandemic pulled the speed brakes on many aspects of social life along with personal and professional life. It provided a forced break, albeit unwanted and unexpected, from overly-packed days with hours of commuting, working, and socialising in multiple physical spaces, and restricted us all to our personal confines. In these bounded personal spaces, our relationships with our own selves became ever more important and people began to be confronted by their mental health, or their continued negligence of it.

Physical spaces have up till now been silos for different activities social spots for friends, houses for families, offices for work. In this set-up, mental health could easily be dissociated from our being and personal needs could easily be made second to those two extra hours in the office on a Friday, or the drink with a friend at the newest bar etc. However, being continually cooped up in the same space made it harder for

people to continue to ignore or repress their mental health. With the continued impact of the pandemic, people began or atleast attempted - to refocus their lives towards a greater balance for mental well-being. This moment provides an important pandemic pivot as well as a key moment in the 21st century lifestyle, and highlights the importance of mental health. This moment also led to a significant shift in people’s internal and external lives, interactions, and even consumer patterns.

Since this is so similar across the global communities, I choose to call this The ‘Mental Being’ of the whole humanity. And this has affected our environment, or, perhaps, vice versa! The fear of getting infected, the stigma that arises (yes even today) out of it, the fear of dying as has been exemplified by the sheer statistics of the spread of the disease by volume across the globe, has created different types of fears, frustrations, limitations, needs, lifestyles etc.

And it is this Mind that matters. This matters because it defines how we deal with everything around us as well as the environment, and in this particular context, the business environment, which needs to change to respond to the now differing consumer behaviours. One of the most major pivots arising out of the pandemic is in the way we need to do business now, how we evolve and adapt to the new ways of consumer behaviour. It is an equal challenge for the consumers as well as the service providers. All behaviours are driven by the Mind which finally minds all these matters!!

So, from a business perspective, we need to take stock of this new emerging ‘Mental Being’ with the changed the product and service user patterns, and given the stages of the pandemic, with those which are continuing to change. How do we establish a connect without a connect, engage without a physicality, touch lives without touching them? Or, how do we cater to those who choose these new behaviours and those who prefer the old ones? This is another critical pivot the pandemic has created.

In a way this Mental Being is also creating a more efficient way of living..

This evolution has impacted healthcare as much as all other businesses in general as well – in the way consumers now approach these as well as the ways the providers had to find to conduct these, given the new constraints.

Another critical pivot of the pandemic is going to be the further evolution of healthcare. In the medium we choose to consume the services – physical, digital / remote; as well as the different aspects of it – preventive as well as curative, mental as well as physical. The digitisation which was earlier being looked at as an efficiency tool, is today a need. The mental well-being today is beginning to be recognised as almost a precursor to the physical one as doctors and people in general are waking up to the effects as well as the convenience of this.

In a way this is emerging as another big business opportunity for healthcare players in the product as well as the services sector. Healthcare is at the cusp of change towards connected health with connected devices alongside telemedicine solutions. Connected devices offer monitoring for wellness and preventive / pre-emptive data for healthy life style solutions through specific devices or even through mobile phones. Some connected devices also offer remote disease specific monitoring so timely medical interventions can be done reducing emergency / critical hospitalisation episodes. Diagnostics is evolving to home self-screening options and point of care checks. Tele-medicine is showing how these dots can be connected for wellness, preventive or curative episodes. Thus healthcare is slowly changing for the providers as well as the consumers as the global communities wake up to the challenges of more such possible pandemics while dealing with the one ongoing.

The question is, how do we unmask – be it at a personal level as the protective layer we believe to be our saviour, or, at a conceptual level to wake up to a new reality – the need to upgrade our health as well as our economic status? And the only answer is by adapting and innovating!

Gurrit K Sethi, Strategic Advisor for Global Health Services, Global Strategic Analysis, contributes to healthcare by helping providers build and better business efficiencies and concept development, also strives to contribute socially through the Swiss Foundation, Global Challenges Forum as Strategic Advisor, through conception of sustainable health initiatives. She started her career from the shop floor working her way up to lead different healthcare businesses in different domains and verticals. Her significant achievements have been in bringing to life different SMEs and SBUs signifying a change in the Indian healthcare scenarios, as the opportunity paved the way along the healthcare growth curve in the country. With over 20 years in healthcare under her belt, she has carried transformational changes in the projects she has led, four of those being early stage start-ups. Gurrit is an avid traveller and voracious reader of varied genres, attributes which she says, provide her with incisive insights about people and systems and what drives them. AUTHOR BIO

medavis RIS

Implementation of single data entry with efficient workflow and patient safety

Angella Alfa Chrispa Aulia, Head, Department of Product and Application Specialists, PT Noah Arkindo

Saint Borromeus Hospital, founded on September 18th in 1921, is one of the oldest hospitals in Bandung, Indonesia. The hospital was started by six nuns from the Sisters of Charity of St. Charles Borromeo Congregation. Until now, St. Borromeus Hospital has succeeded in becoming the leading hospital in West Java. The trust given by the community has made St. Borromeus Hospital known as a referral hospital for the city, province and even a strategic partner of several well-known hospitals at the Asian regional level. In the work of health services, St. Borromeus Hospital has become a government partner for the National Health Insurance System Implementation Program.

Vision of Saint Borromeus Hospital:

To be a world-class, trusted and professional service hospital based on the spirit of love

St. Borromeus Hospital’s vision is to be a worldclass, trusted and professional service hospital based on the spirit of love. To realize this vision and maintain public trust, the management of St. Borromeus Hospital always provides the best health services for patients, especially in radiology services. Currently, St. Borromeus Hospital provides up to 5,000 radiological examinations every month and the number continues to increase according to Robby Hermawan, Sp.Rad.M.Kes as Head of the Radiology Department. With 15 doctors and 57 staff, the radiology medical support unit belonging to St. Borromeus Hospital is of course very busy.

Robby Hermawan, with the support of St. Borromeus hospital management, has implemented the radiology information system medavis RIS in 2018. Today, the radiology workflow at St. Borromeus Hospital is running digitally because medavis RIS has been connected with PACS, HIS and modalities in the hospital.

Robby Hermawan

Head, Radiology Department Saint Borromeus Hospital

Improving Patient Safety

According to Th. Widjajanti S, MM as the Head of the IT Teams at St. Borromeus Hospital, medavis RIS has met the hospital management’s expectations. Workflow digitalization with medavis RIS has been proven to improve work efficiency and accuracy of radiology service data. Currently, patient data and patient radiological examinations can automatically be seen in the modality with high accuracy. Based on this, for St. Borromeus Hospital, the use of medavis RIS has also proven to increase the efficiency of service time per patient. This can be seen with the increase in requests for radiology examinations. Especially requests for sudden examinations (cito)

can better be served by radiology staff and hospital radiologists today. Another positive improvement from the radiological digitization is the fast availability of the patient’s diagnostic results in the form of digital images and reports. Apart from making images and reports quickly available online to referring doctors through the HIS, the ease of viewing radiology results digitally also enables a significant reduction in costs for the use of consumables such as films.

Doctor Widjajanti also stated that patient safety in providing health services for the community is the main concern of the St. Borromeus Hospital Manage-

Petrus Mayar Santoso

Senior Radiographer Saint Borromeus Hospital ment. This includes the process of transferring accurate patient data from medavis RIS to the modality, as well as supporting radiologists in producing accurate and timely radiological examination reports for each patient.

Mr. Petrus Mayar Santoso, SST as the Senior Radiographer of St. Borromeus Hospital said that “medavis RIS makes it easier for radiology staff, especially in inputting patient data only once (Single Data Entry), thus shortening the service time per patient.”

Today, radiological examinations, especially for patients from within the hospital, can be started and completed more quickly and precisely. Clinic and ward physicians can now refer patients to the radiology unit for examinations, including specific instructions from the HIS workstation. In the RIS, incoming radiology examination orders are shown automatically and the radiology staff can schedule patients instantly with a few clicks.

The radiographer can see the patient with a queue number on the worklist at the workstation. When the

patient’s turn arrives and the radiological examination is ready to begin, there is no longer the process of entering patient data and examinations into the modality. Now, the radiographer only needs to select the patient in the medavis RIS worklist and press the START button, then the patient data and the examination will appear automatically in the modality. “We save a lot of time and reduce human error,” says Mr. Santoso.

After the examination is complete, the Radiographer only needs to press the END button on the RIS workstation. The patient images are automatically stored in PACS, and at the same time, the radiologist can see the information on the worklist that there is a patient examination ready for reporting. Radiographers no longer need to print patient images on film and send the film to the radiologist. When the radiology report has been released by the radiologist, medavis RIS will automatically send the information to the HIS for the referring doctor.

Fast System Implementation

medavis RIS gives comfort and convenience in terms of usability and maintenance, according to Mr. Nico Santono, ST who is in charge of Radiology IT at St. Borromeus Hospital. The radiology staff became proficient in performing day-to-day operations without problems in less than one month. medavis RIS operates 24x7 non-stop, is very stable and has more than 99% availability. from installing and preparing the medavis RIS application, the medavis-Noah team has also provided individual training per user group. During the last 2 weeks prior to Handover, our users were provided with assistance in the field so that they could become more proficient in using medavis RIS in their daily work. Mr. Yaten concludes: “The medavisNoah team has provided the best solution during the implementation process of the medavis RIS. Based on my assessment, I gave a score of 9, on a scale of 1 to 10, for that team.”

Nico Santono

Incharge, Radiology IT Saint Borromeus Hospital

Mr. Santono continues: “If we ever report a problem, PT Noah Arkindo as the local partner of medavis GmbH always provides the right solution and the problem is resolved immediately.”

“During the process of implementing medavis RIS at St. Borromeus Hospital, medavis GmbH and PT Noah Arkindo have provided tremendous support,” said Mr. Yaten Purwono, ST as the Deputy Head of the IT Teams. The medavis RIS Implementation Project, starting from the Kick-Off Meeting to the Handover, was carried out in just 6 weeks. Apart AUTHOR BIO

Angella Alfa Chrispa Aulia joined PT Noah Arkindo in 2015 as Department Head of Product and Application Specialists.

Alfa holds a degree in Pharmacy from Sanata Dharma University in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. She has more than 10 years of project experience with the implementation of hospital and radiology information systems in large hospitals throughout the Indonesian archipelago.