eHealth, is a part of Digital India program of the Government of India.The convergence of digital technologies in health, healthcare and delivery is making medicine and healthcare more personalised and precise.With the advent of Digital India Program of Government of India and improved internet access, integrated healthcare information systems have been developed.
Patients Services : eHospital Suite comprises of eHospital Hospital Management System (HMIS), Online Registration System (ORS), e-Blood Bank, Tele-radiological Services (eCollabDDS) and Tele-Consultation applications. All of these applications support either internal work-flows of the Health Facilities or the Counter-based and online Patient Services. eHospital Suite is Ayushman Bharat Digital Health Mission (ABDM) building blocks compliant. Patients can create Ayushman Bharat Health Account (ABHA), link them with their health record, view their health record on mobile and share it by giving their consent.
Online Services Counter based Service
• Booking Appointment
• Viewing of Lab Reports
• Payment Services
• Blood Bank Availability
• Blood Donation Registration
• Tele-Consultation Booking
• Create ABHA Number • OPD Registration
• Casualty Registration
• IPD Admission
• Billing Services
• Discharge Summary
• Blood Issuance Service
• Laboratory Services
More than 700+ Hospitals have been on-boarded on eHospital Suite to facilitate above services depending upon their implementation. With these services in place, patients don’t have to stand in long queue to get the OPD card. This has helped in better crowd management in OPD area. It has also saved the additional cost spent by the patients. Now, availability of appointment on mobile has also saved papers. Online Registration System (ORS) is a Digital India initiative aims to provide online access to public hospital services for patient with the vision to improve the delivery of healthcare services to the citizens across the country. ORS is Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission (ABDM) building blocks compliant, and patients can register and create Ayushman Bharat Health Account (ABHA) Number and book online appointments for OPD for the hospitals of their choice using ABHA Number. One can maintain family and their appointment record is also made available. Apart from this, patients can also book tele-consultation appointment by using ABHA ID and also access their lab investigation reports online, check the blood availability status and make payments online in the hospitals. 475+ Hospitals already on-boarded and 58.40 Lakhs+ appointments have been taken using https://ors.gov.in, RT-PCR Mobile App
Covid 19 Sample Collection Management System
(https://covid19cc.nic.in). ICMR designed the Specimen Referral Form (SRF) for data collection of Covid19 test sample collection. NIC designed and developed the RT-PCR (Reverse Transcription – Polymerase Chain Reaction) and RATI (Rapid Antigen Test of India) mobile apps to collect sample by Sample Collectors for ICMR Testing Laboratories. The RT-PCR and RATI mobile apps are used by sample collectors (Phlebotomists) in India while taking samples of Covid19 suspect patients either at their residence/ camp or in the Hospital/ Laboratory. The patients’ personal details, address, mobile number, location, symptoms, sample date/ time, doctor/hospital information is captured in the mobile app, which takes less than a minute. A unique SRF ID is generated by these mobile applications for the sample taken and this is marked on the sample, which is physically sent to one of the ICMR authorized laboratories for actual testing and result of test is entered against this SRF ID for further analysis, contact tracing etc.
NIC has developed AI based tool to assist Radiologist in TB detection. This has been integrated with eCollabDDS – a Tele-Radiology solution from NIC to facilitate the end users in uploading the Chest X-Rays from health facility where radiologist is not available and getting the results from AI tool and assist remote Radiologist in determining the results.
The web-portal is used for registration of sample collectors so that only authorized sample collectors use the two mobile applications for taking patient samples. The initiative has addressed majority of the requirements of ICMR, MoHFW, GoI, Testing Labs, Sample Collectors State/District officials. It has ensured the data collection of Covid19 patient samples in a standard format because every sample collector uses these apps and data gets transferred to ICMR for entry of result and to other apps for further uses. Since the mobile number of patients and their physical location is captured by the RT-PCR mobile app, the data is shared with Arogya Setu app and State/District Administrative/Health officials which helps to better track and contain the spread of Corona virus in India. So far, more than 38 Crore RT-PCR samples have been collected by 2 lakh plus sample collectors in 31 States/ UTs of India and forwarded to 9,000 plus ICMR laboratories for capturing the results. The State/ District Health officials in these States/UTs have been using this eco-system for monitoring purposes as well. Oxy Care Integrated Portal for Managing Oxygen Devices
(https://oxycare.gov.in). During the pandemic period, the demand for oxygen at various health facilities across the country raised many-fold. To meet the challenges of supplying required oxygen, the Ministry of Health, Government of India (GoI) decided to develop a system for managing oxygen related devices like Oxygen Concentrators, PSA Oxygen Plants, Ventilators, Oxygen Cylinders and Oxygen Controllers. In order to meet the requirements of stakeholders like MoHFW, PMO, States, Districts, Health Facilities, Procuring Agencies, Manufacturers, Service Engineer, NIC developed unified platform to manage all the oxygen devices through a web portal and mobile apps. Every oxygen device was pasted with Secure QR Code for tracking purposes, monitoring of distribution of devices till health facilities, Management System for Annual Maintenance Contract (AMC), Final Acceptance Certificate (FAC), Problem Reporting and Resolution, Integrated Dashboard, Data Analytics, Graphs, Auto-alert Emails etc. Details of Oxygen Stewards are available on the portal for better coordination. PSA Oxygen Plants, fitted IoT devices, are being monitored centrally for parameters like Pressure, Flow and Purity. Exceptional reporting of these parameters helped in managing the PSA Plants timely. Mock Drill of these plants is also being monitored. Through OxyCare, 1,13,986 Oxygen Concentrators, 5045 PSA Plants, 52,251 Ventilators, 50,000 Oxygen Controllers and 1,50,000 Oxygen Cylinders are being monitored.
Centre of Excellence, AI (Health Initiatives): To meet the goal of ending the TB epidemic by 2025, a MoU was signed between NIC, Central TB Division, MoHFW and ICMR to share annotated Chest X-rays for training of AI model for abnormality detection. NIC has developed AI based tool to assist Radiologist in TB detection. This has been integrated with eCollabDDS – a Tele-Radiology solution from NIC to facilitate the end users in uploading the Chest X-Rays from health facility where radiologist is not available and getting the results from AI tool and assist remote Radiologist in determining the results. As of now, AI tool has achieved a reasonably good accuracy of 72% using 50,000 annotated Chest X-rays for training of the model. With the input of the Radiologists, this model will be further trained to increase the accuracy. All these systems have brought radical changes in the life of patients, health providers and health systems, planners, and administrators.
(The author is Scientist-G at National Informatics Centre, Government India. Press Information Bureau has mailed this article to “Kashmir Horizon” for publication in this newspaper. Views are his own)
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