Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) has joined hands with Asia's largest ophthalmology hospital, Sankara Nethralaya to sign an agreement wherein the latter will outsource all IT solutions requirements from TCS.

TCS will through its Healthcare Practice Group implement the Tata Hospital Management Systems (HMS) at the hospital over the next nine months, according to J. Rajagopal, Director, Global Life Sciences and Healthcare Practice, TCS. TCS will also build a next generation Ophthalmic Electronic Medical Record (EMR) for the hospital. The EMR will have intelligent functionality and would help the hospital access its customer records electronically.

The agreement will help Sankara Nethralaya to provide for better customer services, according to Dr. S.S. Badrinath, President and Chairman, Sankara Nethralaya. “The EMR will provide a complete database of persons who are already on our records and help facilitate their treatment. Over 1200 to 1500 patients visit the hospital on a daily basis and EMR would help us to care for them better,” Dr. Badrinath added, claiming further that the tie up is a culmination of the hospital's vision of providing evidence based medicine.

It can be mentioned in this context, a Singapore hospital has already evinced interest in adopting the EMR to be implemented at the hospital.