Apollo Hospitals, Hyderabad, one among Asia’s largest integrated healthcare providers, announced the seventh chapter of its flagship conference ‘The International Conference on Transforming Healthcare through IT’, scheduled on October 21st and 22nd in Chennai.
The one of its kind conference themed on leveraging IT in healthcare and patient safety is a platform to bring forth key developments and success stories wherein technology has been harnessed to improve the overall healthcare ecosystem across the globe. This is the only platform in the country that brings together leaders in the domain with an intent to exchange knowledge and exhibit what technology can do to improve the quality of life through healthcare.
Amongst the keynote speakers at the conference are, Ms Sangita Reddy – joint managing director, Apollo Hospitals Enterprise Limited (AHEL), Dr Preetha Reddy – managing director, AHEL, Prof Thais Russomano – chief medical officer, International Space Medicine Consortioum Inc, Russell P Branzell – CEO & president of the College of Healthcare Information Executives (CHIME), Steve Liber – president, CEO of HIMSS and Dr Eswara Reddy – deputy drugs controller of India.
Apollo Hospitals being a thought leader has been driving the need for this revolution and has successfully leveraged IT in healthcare in various aspects like surgical advancements, access to healthcare through ePHCs and through engaging tools like telemedicine, eICUs that has helped the organization service patients residing in remote and rural areas.
Sangita Reddy, joint managing director, Apollo Hospitals Enterprise Limited, says, “A country like India with a huge population demands unique solutions to cater to the rising healthcare demands. This conference will be an ideal platform for knowledge transfer on unique technologies and solutions from key players in IT, Healthcare and also policy makers and government bodies to break down challenges, identify solutions and devise an execution plan to make healthcare accessible to all individuals.”
According to Medical Council of India (MCI), there are around 9.29 lakh doctors registered in the Indian Medical Register, giving a doctor patient ratio of 1:1674 against the WHO norm of 1:1000. While government bodies and private organizations are trying their best to evaluate and leverage existing manpower and resources for better healthcare access and delivery, few organizations have started migrating towards technology to help tackle this shortage.
“Clearly this is the way forward. Technology advancements in healthcare informatics, telemedicine, Hospital Information System (HIS), electronic health records, remote diagnostic, therapeutic tools, healthcare wearables have pivoted the first step towards tech enabled healthcare and can be further leveraged to effect new modalities of healthcare. Improvements in collaborative data exchange, workflows and mobility, and need for better financial management are the next phase of technological evolution in healthcare” adds Sangita Reddy.
The conference will also see the participation of all the board members together from the International Society of Telemedicine and eHealth (ISfTeH), an international federation that facilitates global dissemination of knowledge and experience in Telemedicine and eHealth wherein the team will share their distinguished knowledge in the various areas relating to Telemedicine such as ‘Transatlantic Teleconsultation’, ‘Human-Computer Interaction Technology’ etc. “Telemedicine is today taking the centre stage with its growing potential to deliver better and more precise healthcare services. An informed patient is the new foundation that our future is set to grow up on. In that regard, we see it a great opportunity to participate in a platform in India, to bring in global ideas to the table for collective growth and potential collaboration. We are glad to have associated with Apollo Hospitals in this endeavor to further our efforts in increasing access to information in the field of Telemedicine and eHealth”, says Andy Fischer, president, ISFTeH.
The International Congress on Patient Safety 2016 will also bring together patient safety experts from across the country and the world, right here in Chennai to discuss and share knowledge on ways and means to enhance patient safety and also look at avenues to improve healthcare delivery and access. Transforming healthcare with IT was conceptualized to create a platform for organisations with similar objectives of enhancing healthcare access and delivery to come together and deliberate on the best possible tools to improve India’s healthcare eco-system. These twin conferences, conceptualized with the single agenda of enabling better healthcare reach will be the ideal platform to discuss way forward and strategy to make India a healthier nation.