Amrita HMIS, implemented by HP in Maharastra, bags the E-governance award :
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Anuradha Mascarenhas Posted online: Fri Aug 27 2010, 06:23 hrs
Pune : The ambitious hospital management information system of Maharashtra has bagged the e-governance award from among 444 nominations and online voting for the best project in e-health.
In three years, a total of 11 lakh patients have been given their health identification numbers at four government hospitals in Pune, Mumbai, Aurangabad and Nagpur. Apart from faster dispensation of medication to the patients at the pharmacy through online prescriptions with few errors, the hospital management information system (HMIS) has reduced the waiting time for patients by making online data available about their medical history.
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The state’s HMIS system that took a while to take off has bagged the e-governance award and has been featured in ‘e-Gov’ Asia’s monthly magazine on e-governance. From among 444 nominations, a 27-member jury selected the state’s HMIS project which outsourced the entire patient registration and front office management.
There was even online voting for a month and the HMIS project bagged the best government initiative in e-health, said Girish Kumar, head, Health Care Vertical, Hewlett Packard. “While the health ID card will be issued soon to the patients, the next phase is now to computerise the remaining ten government medical colleges and attached hospitals in the state,” said Milind Naik, Hewlett Packard Enterprise Services.
Dr Arun Jamkar, dean, BJ Medical College and Sassoon Government Hospital, said, “The project started in January, 2007 and went live only in October 2008 due to certain difficulties.”
Dr Sanjay Bijwe, project director, HMIS, who had earlier pointed out that computerisation of the OPD was the biggest challenge.
While the doctors take rounds, the nurses record the details in a register. For this reason, the computerisation is slightly difficult in the in-patient department, admits Jamkar.However, the government has plans to introduce mobile cards and biometric identification to develop the health ID card.
While numbers have been given patients, normally the OPDs are crowded and hence there is less time for verification of the details provided by the patient.
However, the process is underway. “We have installed 5-600 computers and presently phase II of the HMIS project is underway,” said Jamkar.
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