siliconindia | | May 20199It is an Assert Locator: In any hospital, there are different assets like patient furniture, medical equipment, engineering equipment, office furniture, sterilization equipment, vehicles, ambulances, library books, and so on. These items need to be physically checked and ver-ified every year as per statutory requirements to know whether they are intact. Checking these items physical-ly is a cumbersome process and laborious. The accuracy could not be ascertained. Asset tracking system with the help of mobile and IoT device make the life easy, fast, and error free. The same device can also help the hospitals to evaluate the equipment utilisation status when it is linked to the billing system. Otherwise, analysing the utilisation of such a huge list of equipment is next to impossible.It is a Vital Recorder: When a patient gets admitted in an emergency, at least for the first few hours patient's vitals need to be monitored frequently and recorded to di-agnose accurately. But due to the shortage of staff and heavier workload, in many hospitals, frequency could not be maintained at the desired level. Here again, the mobile device and IoT comes as a boon for hospitals to monitor the vitals continuously and get recorded automatically. It will take the readings directly from the medical equipment connected to the patient. Consultants, with the support of this, can easily diagnose the patient and start treatment promptly. This documentation will be very handy for pa-tient documentation, especially when it is required for any medico-legal complications. When the treating doctor is not reachable to the hospital in time, the diagnostic imag-es could be transferred to the doctor through mobile to get treating directions. It is a Record Keeper: Electronic Health Record is an-other gift from the mobile device. Patients can view their records in their mobile and show it to the treating doc-tor whenever needed. This totally avoids carrying heavy documents and films of various sizes from place to place. Even if the patient is out of his town, he can get treated by a new doctor at the new location, with the help of EHR. This can be stored for many years, created at different hospitals at different locations. This will enable continuity of treatment.It is a Communicator: In any hospital, ambulances are kept ready to drive with technologists and medicines at any time. Conventionally, till the patient reaches the hospital and doctor observes the readings, treatment could not be started. But now, from the time a patient is picked-up in an ambulance, the vitals and other parameters are transmitted through networked mobile device to the con-trol station of the hospital, where experts are available round the clock. They can observe the vitals and give directions to the technologist in the ambulance while in transit to take care of the patient till he reaches the hospi-tal. If needed, arrangements for procedures could be kept ready before the patient reaches the hospital, to save the precious time. There are many such applications of mobile device available in practice, which is transforming healthcare in India and helping all stakeholders. For a country like us where there is no sufficient healthcare workforce as per WHO norms, innovative usage of mobile is going to be very useful. It is essential to introduce newer ways and means to make quality and affordable healthcare acces-sible to each & every one of this country. Training and education of such applications to the mass will widen the usability. For a country like us where there is no sufficient healthcare workforce as per WHO norms, innovative usage of mobile is going to be very usefulDr. Sivakumaran Janakiraman
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