CRISIS UNDER CHECK
Paromita Pain, May 25, 2009
The Hindu Business Line
Collecting and sharing vital health information underpins the successful containment of virus outbreaks and is one of the key requirements to ensure that public health is protected," says Suganthi Shivkumar, Managing Director, South Asia, for Informatica, working in the space of data integration solutions. In a chat, Suganthi shares insights into how governments can make technology serve more effectively as a public healthcare manager.
What are the various ways the government can technically ramp up healthcare?
With healthcare becoming increasingly patient-centric and information-rich, huge volumes of data are being generated by healthcare providers, patients, payers, facilities supplying specialised care on an outsourced basis, and other third-party organisations.
With a data integration platform in place, healthcare organisations will be able to unlock the value of the information residing in their systems by bringing together patient information from disparate systems securely and reliably.
This will increase confidence in the accuracy of patient records and decrease regulatory non-compliance risks by ensuring precise, consistent data delivery with reliable audit trails.
Proper data integration can also link clinicians, personalise patient care and enable access to external patient data.
By doing so, medical staff will be able to improve the overall quality of patient healthcare not just during the outbreaks of epidemics but normal day-to-day operations as well.
Please tell us more about the Hong Kong Hospital Authority data integration platform. Does India have anything like that?
The Hong Kong Hospital Authority, a statutory body that manages all public hospitals and clinics in Hong Kong, has standardised on Informatica's data integration software to consolidate medical reporting, research, auditing and front-line clinical care data.
In the past, it was extremely difficult to get a complete and up-to-date patient view across hospitals and clinics, but Hong Kong doctors are now able to engage in more comprehensive medical investigations for improved care, and have in place a platform for sharing critical information in near real time to aid in controlling the spread of diseases including SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome).
The Hospital Authority has used the data integration platform to consolidate data from 30 clinical systems implemented across 43 hospitals and 121 general and specialised outpatient clinics.
The integrated data fuels a data warehouse containing historical data on six million patients, or 90 percent of the municipality's population. The data enables holistic views of the organisation's business and medical performance, as well as clinical research in support of evidence-based medicine.
During the recent SARS crisis, data integration was leveraged to create an external reporting system for sharing SARS-related data with the government's Department of Health to help support contact tracing and quarantine control.
Replacing a fax-based information-sharing process, the system was set up in just five days, with the data integration portion taking less than two days to implement.
The Hospital Authority is presently working on an expanded communicable disease information system.
SERVICE IS A CALL AWAY
T.E. Raja Simhan, May 25, 2009
The Hindu Business Line
Jalgaon District in the north-west region of Maharashtra is known for its advances in horticulture. Its production of bananas and cotton through drip irrigation has been cited as a role model for cultivators in other parts of India.
Now the district, with a population of around four million, is changing the way people communicate and interact with the district administration through the e-lokshahi project.
Connecting with the administration is just a phone call away, says the district collector Kunal Kumar who gave eWorld details of the project implemented by the Chennai-based Bay Talkitec.
The project, according to the collector, provides an opportunity for people to interact with the District Authorities regardless of where they are.
Queries and complaints can be made through a phone call. The callers are then given a token number using which they can check the status of their request later by dialling into the IVR (interactive voice recording) system.
Callers do not need to worry about whether their requests are being looked into, says the collector. The officer concerned needs to address the issue within a time frame, failing which it gets escalated to the next higher level. If a complaint is not closed within a pre-defined time frame, even the collector gets the alert.
The collector cites some instances where the service is of help. Prior to the implementation of this system, people needed to wait anywhere between seven days and seven months for a property document. Often, they would make several trips to the tahsildar’s office.
All that is not required now. Citizens wanting service will only need to call in, get a token number and let the process take its course.
The services offered number over 90, including queries over government fee or frequently asked questions.
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