The Hindu : Tamil Nadu News : Patient records in State-run hospitals to be digitised

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Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu

Patient records in State-run hospitals to be digitised

Special Correspondent

Rs.5-crore contract given to Tata Consultancy Services

— Photo: K. Pichumani

RECORDS MANAGEMENT: Union Minister for Overseas Indian Affairs Vayalar Ravi (right), Health Secretary V.K. Subburaj, Tamil Nadu Dr. MGR Medical University Vice-Chancellor K. Meer Mustafa Hussain, and Madras Medical College Dean T.P. Kalaniti, at the inauguration of the 8th annual national medical record conference in Chennai on Friday.

CHENNAI: The government plans to digitise all patient records in State-run hospitals shortly, Health Secretary V. K. Subburaj said on Friday.

Addressing ‘Medrecon-2008,’ the 8th annual national medical record conference here, Mr. Subburaj said already a Rs.5-crore contract had been given to Tata Consultancy Services for evolving a suitable software for State-wide storage and retrieval of clinical data.

With digitisation, each patient will be assigned a code that will enable physicians in any hospital to access the clinical history instantly. This will save time and improve treatment, Mr. Subburaj said. “We wish to make Tamil Nadu a model for other States in medical records management.”

Pointing to serious manpower shortage in medical records section of major and small hospitals and overload the staff faced, the Health Secretary said it was proposed to launch courses in medical records management this year.

Mr. Subburaj noted that though medical records constituted one of the most vital aspects of health care, it was also the most neglected. Training programmes had been discontinued, resulting in dearth of trained manpower.

The government sector, in particular, is lagging behind and there needs to be greater emphasis on documentation, which is no easy task for some of the major hospitals. Around 10,000 patients visit larger hospitals such as the General Hospital in Chennai, he said.

Absence of proper documentation will be acutely felt in tackling medico-legal cases and the issue assumes greater significance with medical insurance set to come in a big way, the Health Secretary said.

Earlier, inaugurating the conference, Union Minister for Overseas Indian Affairs, Vayalar Ravi, called for setting up a national registry of health profiles. Medical records form an important part of medical administration that is useful for patients, physicians and researchers, he said.

Mr. Ravi intended to write to Union Health Minister Anbumani Ramadoss to institute a mechanism to collate the health profiles of all students, to begin with.

Vice-Chancellor of Tamil Nadu Dr. MGR Medical University, K. Meer Mustafa Hussain, said the varsity would help to organise new courses for technicians and officers at the General Hospital and the Institute of Child Health. On the anvil are a diploma course and a bachelor’s degree course in medical records management.

T.P. Kalaniti, Dean, Madras Medical College, who released a souvenir, urged the government to issue a time-frame for which medical records outside the realm of the medico-legal category, needed to be preserved.

Dr. Kalaniti pointed out that in the case of patients who underwent multiple admissions, only a small percentage brought case sheets of previous treatment when they subsequently visited a hospital. Doctors had to go by the patient’s word on previous disease history instead of analysing documentation.

While digitising of patient records would ensure a continuum of case sheets in such case, he also wanted Government to make it mandatory for treating physicians to examine previous history before prescribing new therapy.

C. Govindarajan, president, Health Records Association of India, that is organising Medecron, called for more training programmes in view of the great demand for medical records personnel.

Arjun Rajagopalan, medical director, Sundaram Medical Foundation, P. Ravindran, director, Madras Medical Mission, and T. Raveendran, MMM director of medical services, spoke.

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