siliconindia | | May 20198HEALTHCARE & MOBILEBy Dr. Sivakumaran Janakiraman, COO, KMCHany people think that a mobile phone is meant only for communication and playing games. But in reality, it is capable of performing in-numerable tasks and applications. This gen-eration is lucky enough to have the combi-nation of smartphones and apps which are doing wonders to make many complex tasks easy, com-fortable, and faster. In particular, contribution of mobiles to the healthcare is remarkable. Mobile global market on healthcare application is estimated to be more than USD 84,817 million by 2020. The traffic of mobile is expected to grow seven fold between 2016 and 2021. Population of India has started spending more & more time on mobiles. Hence, any technological application will reach them fast, especially on health and wellness. It is a Navigator: Mobiles are helpful right from fix-ing an appointment of a doctor. The moment anybody en-ters a hospital, it can navigate to the reception, billing, doctor's OPD, diagnostics area and many other purposes without any hurdles. In a big hospital setup, locating an unknown area is really difficult without proper guidance. Mobiles are like carrying a guide with you to direct var-ious wish points in a hospital where one never visited, without asking anybody. For the hospital reception, half of the enquiries are for seeking directional help to locate a service. By the use of mobile by visitors, the receptionist can spend more time on patients who really need help.It is a Monitor: Not all the patients in hospital can walk independently to move from one place to another for getting services. Sick and old patients are transported through wheel chair by transporters pooled at one place. Once a service is completed, the transporter needs to come back to the pool to take the next order. It may so happen that he would have completed an assignment in top floor and after coming to the pool, he needs to go to the same or one floor down. This is an unnecessary movement, waste of labour, time and money. Mobile device combined with IoT has made a revolutionary solution to this. Each porter is provided with a mobile device with ID registered. Once an assignment is over, the porter will get the next assign-ment in the mobile pushed from the pending list, automat-ically from the system. The porter has to move towards the next assignment without coming to the pool. As the transporter's movement is monitored, he runs more times, resulting in reduction of manpower and faster service to the patients. Hats-off to the mobile device.Dr. Sivakumaran has over 25 years of experience in healthcare industry and around 10 years in textile industry. He is an expert in logistics management and was the Chief of materials in two leading corporate hospitals. He has published more than 25 articles in many healthcare magazines on various healthcare topics.IN MY OPINIONM
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