Hospital gets biometric smart

Doctors and nurses will now have little excuse for being late or absent from work at Lok Nayak Hospital. To check staff absenteeism, the administration has decided to have a biometric system of attendance in place within a month's time.

Doctors and nurses will now have little excuse for being late or absent from work at Lok Nayak Hospital.

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To check staff absenteeism, the administration has decided to have a biometric system of attendance in place within a month's time.

The biometric system is an automated online system for marking attendance, which records the time of entry and exit of the employee. It uses fingerprint, voice or even iris scan to provide access and mark attendance.

“The mechanised attendance system will not only help us maintain discipline in the government hospital, but more importantly help us ensure security on campus,” said Dr Amit Banerjee, medical superintendent at Lok Nayak Hospital.

He said there were multiple entry points for staff in the hospital which created a lot of security concern. “Unless there is a single point of entry, security will always be a problem,” he said

Delhi Health Minister Kiran Walia said any system that ensured accountability was welcome. “This will definitely help in bringing in discipline, which is essential for success of any work place,” said Walia.

According to the hospital administration, a formal attendance system will also help streamline attendance and employee holidays.

“This will also do away with the age-old paper based system of marking attendance,” said Dr Banerjee.

The hospital is looking at a November end deadline to streamline the new attendance system.

Once the biometric system is in place, the staff will have a single entry into the hospital.

While Lok Nayak Hospital is the first government hospital in Delhi to have taken this move, staff absenteeism in Indian government hospitals has been an age-old problem in the country.

In multi-nation surveys in 2006, World Bank research said absence rate of medical personnel from their public posts was 40 per cent in India.