Nizam’s Institute of Medical Sciences (NIMS) here is set to become the first government hospital in the state with an established Hospital Information System (HIS). Though the discussions on HIS have been going on for the last five years, the cash-strapped hospital is finally set to begin the process of HIS from January 26.

While private hospitals across the country have a well established Hospital Information System (HIS), government hospitals do not. At least, no government hospital in Andhra Pradesh is equipped with HIS. This, senior doctors say, is due to their keenness to hide corruption and make transparency difficult in administration.

The HIS is a comprehensive, integrated information system designed to manage all the aspects of a hospital operations, such as medical, administrative, financial, legal and the corresponding service processing. This, officials at NIMS say, will be a significant step towards bringing  transparency in the hospital that lacked financial and administrative discipline.

According to them, it had become extremely difficult in tracking down files regarding purchases, material management, patient management, lab investigation and online reporting, records maintenance, etc at NIMS.

A deal was recently struck with the government agency CDAC for installation of the system in the hospital. It is learnt that the same form of systems would be extended by the state government in other government hospitals too.

Speaking about the new integrated system, NIMS director Dr L Narendranath said, ‘’We plan to make it fully operational in a year. The state government will pay for the software and NIMS for the hardware and customisation of software. The process will take place department by department,” he said.

The new system, estimated at Rs 15 crore, is meant to plug all the loopholes in revenue losses, provide better monitoring and efficient healthcare. ‘’All machines will be interfaced with computers. The minute one sample goes into the machine, all the details and reports relating to that will be available on the computer which can be accessed centrally. This would save all the paper work and the manpower used in different stages of data entry could be better utilised,” said an official.

source: http://www.newindianexpress.com / The New Indian Express / Home> Cities> Hyderabad / by Rahul S. Pisharody  – Hyderabad / January 18th, 2014