Why do we need a Health Record System in India?
There are many healthcare-related challenges that an emerging economy of the size of India faces. On the ground level, many problems need to be addressed by policy changes and administrative actions. However, some of the issues can be better solved by small start-ups like us.
India needs an initiative that will give an impetus to the healthcare sector. Just imagine having a Central Health Record System in India, it is an initiative that can revolutionize the Indian healthcare and technology sector, for a small investment.
Farmako Healthcare is launching a project to build a cloud-based National Health Record System. We can solve tonnes of problems by deploying such a system.
Lack and unavailability of medical records
It is common in India for patients to go to the doctor with no medical history from their past. Either they keep reports in a file-based system, or no record is maintained. The patient may only be vaguely aware of the diagnosis and often tends to have no idea of the drugs taken in the past. As a consequence, not only does the quality of care suffer, but the cost goes up significantly too.
In several developed countries, a significant issue is that the data is stored in different format systems, and hospitals can’t share this data even if patients want them to. It leads to poor quality of care and increased costs too.
As a result, a large amount of data exists, but most of it in silos, not accessible to systems that are different from the one it is created for.
Reliable data for policymaking and public health decisions
In the absence of reliable data, regulatory authorities and policymakers often fly blind, observing obsolete and flawed protocols, or formulating policies that are not relevant to the current needs of the people.
During the public health crises experienced among many developed countries recently, hospitals were rapidly able to implement new guidelines required to deal with the potentially dangerous epidemics like Ebola.
Public health departments will be able to initiate rapid interventions based on the signals being received automatically from the data entered by the clinicians in the EMR system, even as they take care of their patients.
For example, if multiple clinics in a locality start seeing patients with symptoms suggestive of a contagious disease, the authorities could jump into action to prevent its spread across the country. A potential epidemic would be detected, and a much broader hazard averted.
Medical Research
A shared health data system will allow biomedical researchers to access a rich trove of data, allowing them to make significant discoveries. It acquires special significance as more and more genomic data becomes a part of standard medical care.
For Indian researchers to make a mark in this field, and to be able to create data sets that are more relevant to the Indian communities, access to a large pool of data is of paramount importance.
AI-driven Solutions
Data based methods have proven to be a useful tool to detect “hot spots,” which are areas prone to develop chronic health-related problems. The health record system linked with other sources will allow us to identify such hot spots and alert the clinicians. The government health officials will be on guard for diseases that are prevalent in their areas.
Also, a large proportion of the health workforce in India is made up of semi-skilled and poorly educated personnel. Even the doctors working in rural areas have difficulty in keeping up with medical advancements.
In such an environment, AI-driven solutions applied to health records can play a vital role in patient care and training of the workforce.
We have all the elements needed to make such an ambitious project successful. We have the technical know-how and a workforce to implement it. The Centralized Health Record System that Farmako is implementing will be a great boon to India, in terms of its economy, the well-being of the nation, the welfare of the people, and goodwill around the world.
