Indian healthcare needs to adopt technology solutions to stall medical errors. A clinical decision support is much wanted to enhance patient care, said Shireesh Sahai, CEO – India, Wolters Kluwer.

India like any other developing country is recording a lot of medical errors. There are several technology trends that are transforming the way medical professionals work. Globally rising costs and uneven quality of care are prompting increased adoption of value-based healthcare delivery models where hospitals are paid based on the quality, instead of the quantity.

Clinical Decision Support systems use advanced algorithms to provide doctors with the patient-specific information they need to make the right decisions at the point of care delivery. This obviously reduces medical errors and lowers healthcare cost. Practicing physicians need to seek answers for clinical questions during patient care but are often pressed for time, he added.

An effective CDS system when integrated into healthcare delivery systems reduces the cost in addition to reducing medical errors. This is because doctors will be making better, more efficient decisions, thereby reducing unnecessary prescriptions, tests, referrals, among others, Sahai told Pharmabiz in an email.

Quoting a study by Prof Ashish Jha from the Harvard School of Public Health which showed that 5.2 million medical errors and adverse events occur in India annually, leading to approximately 3 million years of healthy life loss annually, Sahai stated that it is critical to upgrade healthcare systems with digital technologies.
 
The Union government too has realized this need and is working towards healthcare reforms. The government has comprehended the potential of digital health that it can reduce medical errors and cost of care. However, healthcare reforms, especially when it involves setting up of the digital infrastructure like health information exchanges, typically take time. So it is important for India to identify the interventions which are easy to do and also provide positive outcomes, he noted.
 
If a best-in-class CDS accessible on mobile devices is made available to doctors in India, its investment can immediately start delivering outsized returns in terms of decreasing healthcare costs and improving patient outcomes. Moreover physicians often do not seek answers to many of their questions. In this regard a research was conducted to understand the self-reported information needs of doctors during a half day of typical office practice. Only 30% of doctors’ information needs were met during the patient visit. Many doctors in India take help from their peers through informal networking channels like WhatsApp groups. While this may be helpful to some, an evidence-based, standard protocol-driven approach need to be adopted for keeping oneself updated, said Sahai.
 
Digital connectivity enables accessibility on the move, improves quality and efficiency of healthcare. This is where a CDS systems like UpToDate from Wolters Kluwer which is online and app-based makes available answers to questions that have a huge impact on clinical decision making. A study by Harvard researchers published in the Journal of Hospital Medicine in 2011, showed that using UpToDate shortened hospital stays, fewer fatalities and better quality performance. This year, a Japanese study published in the International Journal of Medical Informatics highlighted that UpToDate reduced diagnostic errors. Therefore Indian healthcare practitioners must start leveraging CDS systems, stated Sahai.