In recent times, healthcare facilities have started adopting various digital technologies to change the way they do business. Hospitals are not only going the e-way for enhancing patient experience and providing better consistent care, but also to increase efficiencies by optimally utilising their scarce resources.
Enhanced Patient Experience
Hospitals have developed websites and apps through which they continually engage with the patient base. These apps are used not only to book OPD appointments and view test results, but also to have virtual consultations with the specialists of their choice from the comfort of their homes. Hospitals also use these apps to further consolidate their connection with their potential customers by sending them health tips, reminders about tests /consultations, as also special offers on targeted services.
As patients are turning into ‘consumers’, with expectations of good service and experience, hospitals are deploying electronic queue management systems, such as those seen in bank branches, to ensure convenience to their patients. Similarly, in-patients requests are tracked through digital platforms, which often use artificial intelligence to provide satisfactory and swift resolution of customer requests.
Improved Access & Efficiency
The rise in robotic surgeries is an example, wherein robots perform high-precision surgeries thereby ensuring quality and helping deal with the acute shortage of super specialist surgeons in certain locations. Electronic Medical Records (EMR), using standardised terminologies such as ICD10 and SNOMED-CT, ensure the patient’s clinical information is consistent and not prone to interpretational errors. Networks of health facilities are able to seamlessly share this data through Health Information Exchanges (HIE) in a more connected ecosystem.
Hospitals are reducing length of stay at hospital by using wearables to track and monitor the health and recovery of their patients, after they get discharged. Similarly, e-ICUs are helping hospitals provide critical care to patients remotely – a big boost to a country like India where intensivists are concentrated in top cities only.
Technologies such as Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) are being used to train doctors and technicians remotely, often by practitioners and trainers based at top global hospitals.
Picture Archiving & Communication Systems (PACS) help hospitals relay imaging reports across its practitioners digitally, thereby reducing the time taken to diagnose. Barcode scanners are used to quickly identify drugs and consumables for faster, more accurate billing. Asset tracking methodologies – relying on technologies such as Internet-of-Things (IOT) and Real-Time Location System (RTLS) – help hospitals track the location of its movable assets at all times, thereby optimising their utilisation.
Adoption by Public Health System
Considering the large patient volumes they handle, public hospitals need technological interventions the most to be able to make up for their infrastructural shortcomings. Recognising this need, the government of India, under its Digital India initiative, has launched ‘e-hospitals’. The eHospital@NIC system is a Hospital Management Information System developed by the National Informatics Centre (NIC). The system offers functionalities across both patient facing and internal departments, including OPD, emergency registration, billing, EMRs, pharmacy management, diagnostic imaging and stores. AIIMS, New Delhi had first implemented the system in June 2016. Thereafter the initiative was scaled up on a pilot basis in 41 hospitals across India from February 2017 onwards. Currently, about 500+ hospitals have registered on the e-hospital portal and are at various stages of implementation.
Enabling Organisational Characteristics
To embark on this complicated journey, hospitals need to focus on the following three critical elements: Managing change. Digital transformation is a radical shift for most organisations and digitisation initiatives are likely to be met with resistance by doctors and staff who are accustomed to the existing way of doing things. Hospitals must identify physicians who could be early adopters for piloting initiatives and create digital champions. Banking on these digital champions, the initiatives can be scaled throughout the hospital. Senior management must play an active role in endorsing a ‘digital way of doing things’ and drive support for implementations at all levels in order to manage change. Preparing the workforce of the future is another key aspect. Employees must be provided ample training and must be incentivised to foster digital innovation in the organisation.
Data Management. A solid foundation of capturing, storing, securing and analysis of data is the bedrock on which the digital strategy of a hospital must be built. In Indian hospitals, while financial and operational data exists in the electronic form to a large extent, digitisation of clinical data has remained a challenge. Hospitals need to ensure interoperability of all three data types (financial, operational as well as clinical) to unleash the true potential of digitization. This can only happen if the various systems – ERP, HIS, EHR, apps etc. talk to each other. At the same time, with proliferation of digital technologies and electronic data, cyber breaches can become a big risk and hospitals need to guard for this threat by instituting proper cybersecurity measures. Digitisation Strategy. Digital transformation strategy that a hospital adopts must have a long term vision allowing for appropriate time for the various implementations to attain stability and at the same time accommodate futuristic technologies as and when they become commercially viable.
Conclusion
Use of technology is the only viable mechanism to deal with the challenges facing Indian healthcare. Its use can effectively tackle the access, quality and cost issues. It’s heartening to see India make significant progress in this regard. The government needs to invest in and incentivise the use of technology by both private and public health facilities.
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