The Technopark-based Kreara Solutions will soon launch a six-month pilot model of what it calls a cloud-based electronic medical record (EMR) system.
This would set out primary healthcare centres, medical colleges, laboratories and private hospitals looped in a computerised environment in which patient data would move seamlessly to and from a central data server to be accessed at regulated points of access, said Mr Anoop P. Ambika, Managing Director, Kreara Solutions.
PATH-BREAKING
EMR has been shown as improving efficiency by as much as six per cent annually. In the healthcare industry, this is a path-breaking statistic.
Thanks to its well-established e-governance platform and excellent connectivity, Kerala offers itself up as an ideal ecosystem to experiment with and implement EMR, says Mr Ambika, who is also Secretary, GTECH (Group of Technology Companies, Kerala).
For instance, the Akshaya e-kiosks could act as a grassroots-level points where mandatory ‘healthcards' could be issued to the public for entitling themselves to service delivery.
EMR FOR STATE
Frequently ravaged by bouts of contagion, Kerala could benefit from the messaging, tracking, information access and retrieval features to reach out to stricken people in time and deliver critical aid.
The pilot is part of the proposed EMR for the State Government in association with the Department of Health, National Rural Health Mission and the Kerala State IT Mission.
Currently, most of the systems that capture health records stay in the form of disparate data centres and the Government does not have any effective mechanism to consolidate this data into a State data centre.
HEALTH STATISTICS
A major issue is that private healthcare providers till date does not form part of the health reporting system without which the health statistics would not be complete.
“Any attempt to secure the most dependable data would also hinge on the speed with which standardise the reporting format at the stakeholder level,” Mr Ambika said.
The data architecture should enable the State to ideally consolidate data from public hospitals, private hospitals, laboratories and medical stores.
As the healthcare industry moves into the digital age, tedious paperwork is rapidly being replaced by electronic medical records.
STORAGE NEEDS
EMR software dispenses with the need for traditional storage media such as paper or film, thus greatly reducing the cost associated with maintaining records.
EMR can also be updated regularly with ease, making available latest and most correct information.
These records can be effortlessly transferred to both affiliates and third-party healthcare facilities for reference purposes.