CHENNAI: "Paperless" seems to be the flavour of the decade. Not to be left behind, the health sector in Tamil Nadu has decided to jump on to the bandwagon too.

Largest system

Tata Consultancy Services has developed and operationalised what is touted as the largest web-based health information management system for the Tamil Nadu State AIDS Control Society.

The MIS, is now being used by over 400 centres spread all over the State, including counselling centres, community care units, NGO delivery systems and blood banks.

The number is to go up to 800 in a couple of months' time.

Information on HIV/AIDS, sexually transmitted diseases, blood banks, equipment and blood stock position in any village or block in Tamil Nadu is now available, to use a cliché, at the click of a button.

"We are very pleased to be part of this path-breaking initiative," says J.Rajagopal, director, Life sciences and health care practice, TCS. "Its greatest achievement is using IT in a context that will be truly relevant to society."

Password protected

Information regularly collected at the district, taluk and block level healthcare set-ups will be fed into the web, protected by a user ID and password, by operators from their own locations.

The forms, therefore, duplicate the content and even structure of their paper equivalents, says Sumanth Raman, who was part of the TCS team that worked on the project.

Over 700 health staff and NGO representatives have been trained to use the system, which will monitor over 400 parameters. Actual reporting started in December.

Geographic Information System

Compartments have been set in place for each group, be it health officers, counsellors, and field level staff of NGOs. A Geographic Information System has been embedded and serves to narrow down to the basic level.

It will serve, for instance, to find how many HIV positive persons live in a village in Theni district, or to check if a blood bank in the Nilgiris has adequate stock of a certain blood type.

The system will also collate details from different forms or put together various parameters to provide customised reports. "This kind of information is regularly being sent from the State to the Centre.

Low cost, time saving

This system, which is low cost and time saving, will facilitate the health authorities at the State and Central level to directly access this information," Dr.Raman explains. Eventually, the users of the system hope, it will do away with the need to conduct separate disease surveillance trials in the state.

In addition, he points out that the system can also be used for information reporting by other government departments as well, which divide geographic units similarly.

"Though we have started off in Tamil Nadu, we are hoping it will go nation-wide," Mr.Rajagopal says.

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