| | February 20189While Indian hospitals are stepping up their adoption of technology, the government is facilitating large scale health programs which rely on technologymetrics pertaining to re-admissions so as to create intervening pre-ventive health programs and reduce readmissions."Technology is key to making healthcare patient centric. We are experimenting with several technol-ogies to improve patient experience, hospital interactions and medical outcomes," says Rajesh Batra, Chief Information Officer (CIO), Kokilaben Hospital. Emerging Digital Platforms are Transforming Health-care In addition to patient data, Digital has helped us leverage some technolo-gies from other industries. Augment-ed Reality/Virtual Reality (AR/VR) technology is already mainstream in industries like media, entertainment, sports, and gaming. This is another technology that can help us improve care standards. For starters, it can re-ally improve the basic foundational medical education. Anatomy dissec-tion, for example, is a subject plagued by the lack of cadavers and absence of qualified teachers in India. VR en-abled dissections are said to have im-proved the retention and knowledge of anatomy by more than 80 percent in a pilot conducted at Miami Children's hospital. Similar pilots in a major health chain in the U.S. found that res-idents undergoing AR/VR simulation for complex procedures like Tubal In-tubation found a tremendous increase in the precision and efficiency of the residents. India is plagued by the lack of infrastructure. AR and VR give us the opportunity to turn these around and improve the quality and the effi-ciency of the procedures conducted. In India, Hospitals like Sree Ramachan-dra in Chennai and Global Hospitals in Hyderabad have already run proof of concepts with live surgeries being streamed through AR/VR Headsets to students at the hospital. The feedback so far has been promising and we can see in the future more of these Digi-tal technologies being implemented in Hospitals across India. What we can learn from the experience of Hospitals in the U.S. While the health exchange concept is in its nascence in India, the U.S. has had a similar platform for several years now. Centered around the `Tri-ple Aim' ­ better care of individuals, better health for populations, and low-er per capita costs ­ it strives to offer best practices in diagnosis and treat-ment to patients regardless of the cli-nician, provider organization or payer. "All of this relies on gathering accu-rate patient data, starting with patient history and adding quantitative and qualitative data throughout patient interactions," says Jonathan Handler, President, Jonathan Handler Associ-ates, a provider of IT solutions to the healthcare industry in the U.S.The U.S. has seen many popula-tion health programs implemented on the basis of patient data collected by such healthcare systems. A popu-lation health management program in Nashua, New Hampshire, that focus-es on care coordination for substance abuse patients has reduced overdose and fatalities by 34 percent while sav-ing nearly $2 million in utilization costs. Similarly, studies in Camden, New Jersey, showed how the same patients were readmitted to hospitals repeatedly for treatment indicating the need for intervention and preventive health mechanisms. While Indian hospitals are step-ping up their adoption of technology, the government is facilitating large scale health programs which rely on technology. The National Health Poli-cy was just released a few months ago with focus on preventive care through usage of technology and methods like preventive screening. The government has also released standards for elec-tronic medical records (EMR) and medical devices which will help hos-pitals adopt technology faster and in a streamlined manner. Further, most government insurance schemes are set to be cashless, giving the right incen-tive to care providers to adopt tech-nology and leverage patient data to improve care. With the government, hospitals and health insurance provid-ers investing in technology, the future is bright for a healthier India. Dr. Vikram Venkateswaran
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| | February 20189While Indian hospitals are stepping up their adoption of technology, the government is facilitating large scale health programs which rely on technologymetrics pertaining to re-admissions so as to create intervening pre-ventive health programs and reduce readmissions."Technology is key to making healthcare patient centric. We are experimenting with several technol-ogies to improve patient experience, hospital interactions and medical outcomes," says Rajesh Batra, Chief Information Officer (CIO), Kokilaben Hospital. Emerging Digital Platforms are Transforming Health-care In addition to patient data, Digital has helped us leverage some technolo-gies from other industries. Augment-ed Reality/Virtual Reality (AR/VR) technology is already mainstream in industries like media, entertainment, sports, and gaming. This is another technology that can help us improve care standards. For starters, it can re-ally improve the basic foundational medical education. Anatomy dissec-tion, for example, is a subject plagued by the lack of cadavers and absence of qualified teachers in India. VR en-abled dissections are said to have im-proved the retention and knowledge of anatomy by more than 80 percent in a pilot conducted at Miami Children's hospital. Similar pilots in a major health chain in the U.S. found that res-idents undergoing AR/VR simulation for complex procedures like Tubal In-tubation found a tremendous increase in the precision and efficiency of the residents. India is plagued by the lack of infrastructure. AR and VR give us the opportunity to turn these around and improve the quality and the effi-ciency of the procedures conducted. In India, Hospitals like Sree Ramachan-dra in Chennai and Global Hospitals in Hyderabad have already run proof of concepts with live surgeries being streamed through AR/VR Headsets to students at the hospital. The feedback so far has been promising and we can see in the future more of these Digi-tal technologies being implemented in Hospitals across India. What we can learn from the experience of Hospitals in the U.S. While the health exchange concept is in its nascence in India, the U.S. has had a similar platform for several years now. Centered around the `Tri-ple Aim' ­ better care of individuals, better health for populations, and low-er per capita costs ­ it strives to offer best practices in diagnosis and treat-ment to patients regardless of the cli-nician, provider organization or payer. "All of this relies on gathering accu-rate patient data, starting with patient history and adding quantitative and qualitative data throughout patient interactions," says Jonathan Handler, President, Jonathan Handler Associ-ates, a provider of IT solutions to the healthcare industry in the U.S.The U.S. has seen many popula-tion health programs implemented on the basis of patient data collected by such healthcare systems. A popu-lation health management program in Nashua, New Hampshire, that focus-es on care coordination for substance abuse patients has reduced overdose and fatalities by 34 percent while sav-ing nearly $2 million in utilization costs. Similarly, studies in Camden, New Jersey, showed how the same patients were readmitted to hospitals repeatedly for treatment indicating the need for intervention and preventive health mechanisms. While Indian hospitals are step-ping up their adoption of technology, the government is facilitating large scale health programs which rely on technology. The National Health Poli-cy was just released a few months ago with focus on preventive care through usage of technology and methods like preventive screening. The government has also released standards for elec-tronic medical records (EMR) and medical devices which will help hos-pitals adopt technology faster and in a streamlined manner. Further, most government insurance schemes are set to be cashless, giving the right incen-tive to care providers to adopt tech-nology and leverage patient data to improve care. With the government, hospitals and health insurance provid-ers investing in technology, the future is bright for a healthier India. Dr. Vikram Venkateswaran
< Page 8 | Page 10 >