Karnataka government which set aside Rs. 6,107 crore for its health and family welfare department is aggressively looking to strengthen the infrastructure. The National Informatics Centre, in this connection, is gearing up to implement a massive digitization of patient information.
The 2700 healthcare establishments coming under the health and family welfare department cover 30 district hospitals, 176 taluk hospitals and around 2500 primary health centres and community health centres will now get a booster shot. It will execute the e-hospital software in all the hospitals of the state with a view to document and utilise the health information of every patient visiting government hospitals in the state. It will also introduce a system of grant based supply of medicines exists hitherto in all government hospitals of the state. Henceforth, supply of essential medicines will be made to all hospitals as per the requirements. These efforts would begin from April 1, 2015.
While the e-hospital will help improving the administration of healthcare to the patients, the grant based supply of medicines will ensure that all patients will get free medicine, said Dr Shashidar Buggi, director, Rajiv Gandhi Institute of Chest Diseases.
The National Informatics Centre is now gearing up to put into operation patient information collection. In this regard, it has already approached the government cancer centre Kidwai Institute of Oncology to bring it under the fold of hospital management system.
This government cancer hospital has been working on computerized research projects to assess the cancer patient profile and this effort has been useful during its collaborations with National Centre for Biological Sciences, said Dr K B Linge Gowda.
The computerization efforts will also give a big fillip to readily accessible data in the various community health care schemes like free feeding, endowment for Dharmashala patients and such other programs besides free medicine distribution, he noted.
“The 764-bed 53 ward Victoria Hospital which is reported to have a 2.07lakh new cases, is expected to further increase its computerization. We see the e-hospital effort by the government to provide easy access to patient information. It is high time government hospitals do away with files and transcend to a paperless environment, because we are treating more number of patients in a day compared to any super specialty medical centre in the country”, said a panel of junior doctors.
Contending this view was Dr. SIS Kadri medical superintend, Lady Curzon & Bowring Hospital pointed out there is already a major transformation in the building capacity and expertise. The e-hospital effort would only enable faster access to diagnostics and treatment for the patients who access our facility.