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CM asks officials to ensure launch of cloud-based health management system by August this year
New Delhi Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal on Thursday directed officials of the health department to stick to deadlines in order to ensure that the Delhi government’s ambitious project of cloud-based health information management system (HIMS) can be rolled out by August 2021
New Delhi
Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal on Thursday directed officials of the health department to stick to deadlines in order to ensure that the Delhi government’s ambitious project of cloud-based health information management system (HIMS) can be rolled out by August 2021.
Kejriwal passed the order while chairing a review meeting of the project on Thursday.
The HIMS project aims to connect all hospitals, dispensaries, polyclinics and mohalla clinics in the city digitally. It will start with Delhi government hospitals and, with time, aim to rope in hospitals operated by the Central government, civic agencies and private ones, said senior officials in the health department.
The system will include issuing health cards to patients, which would essentially be a QR code-based system that can keep tabs on clinical details such as health checks, follow-ups, surgeries, medications and vaccinations.
The system is also supposed to include a mobile-app as well as a 24x7 call centre to help patients with health-related information, seeking consultation and other assistance. The centralised call centre will provide two levels of help — first where an operator will receive people’s calls and messages and provide them with requisite information and the second where doctors and experts will provide appointments based on the problem or immediately provide solutions for emergency cases.
“The chief minister directed the officials to ensure that work is strictly completed within the stipulated deadline. He also instructed to ensure that the distribution of the health cards is started at the earliest. In the meeting, the healthcare helpline was also discussed… Under HIMS, various features such as a web portal, mobile app, etc will be launched to store a database of the health condition of residents of Delhi. The system will be implemented by August 2021 in all Delhi government hospitals,” said a statement issued by Kejriwal’s office on Thursday.
It further said, “The system seeks to target the health care delivery process. All the patient care services, hospital administration, budgeting and planning, supply chain management, and backend services and processes will be brought under the system. The entire system will be on cloud and digitized. This will enable citizens to avail all information on one platform, which will help them in emergency cases. With this, Delhi will become the only state to have a cloud-based health management system. This facility will also be extended to private hospitals in the future.”
The project is in lines with the Central government’s National Digital Health Mission that also aims to digitise all patient records, where the patient’s ID would act “like a health care account” and the patient’s entire medical history will be available.
