The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News : Easy access to medical records stressed

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Dec 11, 2004

Karnataka

Karnataka - Bangalore

Easy access to medical records stressed

By Our Staff Reporter

BANGALORE, DEC. 10. A framework that will make it easier for hospitals and patients to access electronic records of patient history needs to be developed, said Sunil Shroff, president of the Medical Computer Society of India, here today.

"In case of any emergency, doctors and patients need to be able to access this information from anywhere in the world," he said at the inauguration of Meditel, an international conference on medical informatics and telemedicine.

Poi-Hean Chua of Sun Microsystems said that one in seven hospitalisations occurred because hospitals were not able to access medical records in time. Over 20 per cent of laboratory and diagnostic tests were unnecessarily conducted for this reason.

A health information system is a complex system that contains patient management data such as the time and date of consultations, department management information and clinical data such as examination findings and diagnosis and treatment data. It is also capable of analysing data and showing trends.

However, installing the system was not easy. Over 80 per cent of the hospitals worldwide, in which this system had been installed, it had failed, said Mr. Hean Chua. In most cases, he said, it was because hospitals did not want to upgrade information technology, they did not have skilled manpower to utilise the system and because of unreasonable expectations from the system.

Another problem with health information systems at the moment was that they are not capable of handling new disease threats. "When SARS [Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome] broke out in Singapore, it was chaos. No one knew how to contain it. Absence of patient records made matters worse," he said. The system could work only when different sectors of the healthcare industry such as hospitals, patients, insurance providers, drug retailers and pharmacists worked together in a consolidated manner.

U.R. Rao, Chairman of the Research Council of Physical Research Laboratory, Ahmedabad, said telemedicine was essential in reaching "quality" medical care to the masses. "Only 2 per cent of the doctors work in rural areas and the infrastructure available to them is very limited. There is only one hospital bed for every 10,000 patients."

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Karnataka

News Update

Stories in this Section

Japanese ready to offer help for Metro Rail

Easy access to medical records stressed

Woman robbed of gold chain

Bus stops shifted

Three High Court officers suspended

Around the City

In Bangalore Today