SOFTWARE FOR REAL DATA ON HEALTHCARE ON ANVIL
New Delhi
The Pioneer
Pointing to the lack of real health data across the country, Union Health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad on Monday announced that his Ministry was in the process of developing software that would provide real data for various health indicators. Starting with the pulse polio programme, the software will have detailed data about the number of children throughout the country who have been vaccinated.
At a function to launch the National Initiative for Patient Safety here, Azad said the new software would record the name of the child vaccinated, father's name and phone number. "With these details it will be possible to just call and check if the child has been vaccinated or not," Azad said.
The Minister and other participants at the event pointed out that patient safety was a relatively new health discipline (it came into prominence in the 1990's) that emphasised reporting, analysis, and prevention of medical errors that often leads to adverse healthcare events.
While data showed that less than one death per 100,000 encounters occurred in the nuclear power industry, the European railroads, and scheduled airlines, there was a risk of one death per 1000 encounters in health care. The frequency and magnitude of avoidable adverse patient events was not known until several countries reported staggering numbers of patients harmed and killed by medical errors.
Recognising that healthcare errors impacted one in every 10 patients around the world, the World Health Organisation termed patient safety as an endemic concern. The staggering statistics - 44000 to 98000 preventable deaths annually due to medical error and 7000 preventable deaths related to medication errors alone. The main causes for these have been attributed to complexity of the delivery of the healthcare process, human factors and system failures.
SOON: HEALTH DATA AT THE CLICK OF A MOUSE
New Delhi
Hindustan Times (Delhi edition)
Union Health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad announced on Monday that his ministry was in the process of conceptualising software to maintain and track data for diseases in the country.
"It is an unfortunate reality that we have no system of maintaining a database of diseases. Even if there is, it is either very sketchy or at most times unreliable," Azad said.
"It is indeed sad that although we produce the best doctors and scientists in the world, we are nowhere near global data maintenance standards," the minister said, addressing the press at the launch of National Initiative on Patient Safety (NIPS) organised by AIIMS and WHO.
"We have no data for people dying in our country due to lack of safety measures in hospitals.
Even for this we have to fall back on American, European or Australian databases and draw up our data on mere approximations," he said.
In the first phase, the ministry wants to track polio cases across the subcontinent. And as the health minister put it, "It's doable."
"We will have all the relevant data of the patient so that we can track his case sitting in Delhi. In the second phase, we aim to track all new births and vaccinations," Azad said.
E-GOVERNANCE TAKES A LEAP
Sunitha Rao R, Bangalore
DNA (Bangalore edition)
Every individual's dealings with the Government of Karnataka will now be available at the click of a mouse.
The department of e-governance is upgrading its data centre by increasing the number of departments networked from 23 to 40. Government departments that determine everyday existence like transport, BWSSB and stamps and registration will be among those to be freshly networked.
The data centre, which is presently functioning from Khanija Bhavan, will not only move to a 600 square feet space in Vikasa Soudha, but will also be converted into a disaster recovery site and made to serve as a backup centre for every available document of the 40 departments, MN Vidyashankar, principal secretary, department of e-governance, told a gathering of bureaucrats at a workshop conducted by Intel here on Monday.
"It is the first Level 3 data centre that will be set up in any state in the government sector at a cost of about Rs 675-800 million," Vidyashankar said. The new data centre will become operational in seven months.
Besides, e-governance will be extended by installing 10,000 more nodes in the Secretariat, he said. "The departments are making use of the data centre for disaster recovery and business continuity. The revenue department and BangaloreOne centres are able to provide extensive services efficiently because of the data centre," Dr A Ravindra, CEO, department of e-governance, told the workshop.
E-HUB TO HOST STATE DATABASES
Bengaluru
Deccan Chronicle
The Karnataka government will soon build its own data centre, which will host and integrate the databases and IT operations of most government departments. The planned tier-3 data centre will be the first of its kind to be built by a state government.
To be owned and managed by the government, the data centre will come up on an as yet undetermined location in the central business district.
“We are finalising the location, a 5,000 sft space. The data centre will be ready in about seven months. The project is being carried out under the e-Governance plan of the country and it is expected to cost about Rs 55 crore,” state e-Governance secretary M.N. Vidyashankar said on Monday.
“The data centre will have state-of-the-art equipment and will serve most government departments. Barring the databases of a few departments, such as police, those of most other government departments can be integrated,” he said at a seminar on data centres in the city.
Centre for e-Governance CEO Dr D.S. Ravindran said the data centre will have three main applications: Managed services, such as human resource management for the entire state; business improvement, by providing round-the-clock database services to e-governance centres; and disaster retrieval, by backing up all government data.
“An integrated data centre is the only way to consolidate the large chunks of digital software and data available with several government departments. Moreover, the state data centre will be managed by experts from the US and Karnataka. The government is expected issue an order to integrate the different databases from the departments,” the official said.
E-HEALTH CARDS FOR NEWBORNS ON ANVIL
Parul Chandra, New Delhi
The Asian Age
It’s an idea who’s time may well have come.
Along with the UPA government’s ambitious UID (unique identification number) project, the health ministry has now come up with the idea of e-health cards for the country’s new-borns.
The idea is in a nascent stage and was discussed by minister of state for health Dinesh Trivedi with Nandan Nilekani, who heads the newly-set up Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), during a meeting last week. And among the advantages of having such an e-card would be the tracking of a child’s health right from the time he or she is born, says Trivedi.
Though the terminology being used for the proposed project is "e-health cards", there will be no cards as such. Instead, just as in the case of the UID number, the health ministry would also like to have a number which can be allotted to each child when born, said Trivedi.
With the help of this web-based number, not only can a child’s health parameters and milestones be tracked but it can also be ensured that the vaccinations and other medication is given on time.
For instance, he said parents can be informed about when a child’s vaccination or polio drops are due.
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