How top Indian hospitals are using technology to fight out COVID-19

Updated April 2
COVID-19 pandemic has shoved a big spanner in the operations of businesses across industries. However, the technology readiness, which is realised during normal times has come to the fore with much more force in a super emergency situation like COVID-19 pandemic. The Indian healthcare sector is at the frontline, fighting the pandemic.

Apollo Hospitals Group launched ‘Project Kavach’, which means ‘shield’ as a response plan to fight COVID-19. Shobana Kameneni, Executive Vice Chairperson, Apollo Hospitals Group said, “Apollo Hospitals has specially designed an AI-based Coronavirus Risk Assessment scan for screening and initial assessment, which is  available in the form of an app and on the website (https://covid.apollo247.com/). Over 6 million people have already gone through the screening on the Apollo 24 *7 app and website and it is expected that over 10 million Indians will use this scan to know their risk score.

Medanta, one of the biggest hospital chains in the country has taken multiple steps to catch up to the healthcare crisis. For a hospital, there are two important stakeholders to cater to in the BCP situation – the patients and the hospital employees including doctors. “The Medanta hospital has ramped up resources to service the patients through whatsapp based chats, websites, dedicated call centre, etc. The video conferencing facility was in place since the inception. Now it certainly has more usage,” says Rajiv Sikka, CIO, Medanta Hospital.

Medanta has invested in an integrated telemedicine app, approx. 3 years back and is available on multiple platforms including iOS, android desktops, tablets and mobile etc. It’s not a typical zoom, whatsapp or a video call. The patient can use this App for booking an appointment (4 possible modes of video, in person, telephony or email based chat) and will receive a link which will take him on the session for consultation. Post the session, the patient will receive the prescription and the resultant records will be automatically saved in the employee health records (EHR) system. It’s a comprehensive telemedicine platform – in turn integrated with EHR, VC platforms like zoom as well. The payment gateways work seamlessly for multiple payment options like net-banking debit, credit cards or wallets. Even the senior lab doctors can remotely access various lab machines and review the results before approving it. Similarly radiologists can access any modalities scan over on the picture archiving and communication system (PACS) running on the VPN. Sitting at home, radiologists can prepare, review and discuss the reports with physicians before publishing.  In all cases, patients can access the final approved report from the portal without coming to hospital.

The IT infrastructure created in the last five years has proved critical for the hospital, now when anytime anywhere and secured access has been made possible for functions across the board. “The extra procurement has been done in the form of enhancing teleconferencing ports and channels, to enable more concurrent users to come on a common VC session or a conference call. This usually applies to the care team of doctors, who might want to congregate on a VC session to discuss emergency scenarios or where multi-speciality and highly specialized inputs are required,” says Sikka.

From an IT perspective, work from home (WFH) and e-consultation are the top two priorities for hospitals. Thirdly, the helpline numbers with a chatbot option should also be made available to the patients. “We have made these facilities operational and scaled them up as per the requirements. More employees are now working from home,” says Girish Koppar, GM – IT, Wockhardt Hospital. For e-consultation, the hospital is using zoom. With no extra resources. Zoom facilitates sharing more data on the video call than a typical whatsapp video call. The call is connected by the customer care executive staff of the hospital and he can hide the identity of the doctor. It’s important to note, in the wake of the COVID-19 crises, the regulation has been relaxed to allow the doctors to prescribe and consult over the phone.

Wockhardt Hospital’s digital marketing team headed by Sailesh Sharma in alliance with Easocare, a healthcare startup has created a free to use and a very simple COVID-19 risk assessment tool to do a preliminary evaluation.

Information security during work from home (WFH) is critical, especially when the patient’s health related information is concerned. “All the applications accessed on the internet are compliant with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, (HIPPA),” informs Sikka. Whether the information is accessed from the hospital or from a remote location – irrespective of any device, there are two levels of protection. One at firewall level and second at the user authentication. The user cannot access the applications without logging on to the secured VPN and secondly, the authentication / authorisation is integrated to the active directory (AD) as single sign-on. Additionally, all Apps have zero footprint which means nothing is stored on local mobile devices and information is always pulled from the server in line with information security norms of the hospital.

The digital Apollo 24X7 app, launched by Apollo Hospital offers virtual and telephony consultation with facility to tele-connect with all doctors at Apollo Hospitals enabling patients to seek healthcare while staying at home.

Preetha Reddy, Vice Chairperson, Apollo Hospitals Group said, “At the same time, we are also cognizant of the need to ensure continuity of care for its existing patients.

The One Apollo system with nearly 20 million patient records will enable identification of the most vulnerable patients who have undergone a transplant, need periodic dialysis, or are suffering from cancer, diabetes, and hypertension. The critical factor is continuous care of this vulnerable patient pool who are already under Apollo care, for this not only have our hospital facilities been maintained safe from Covid but reaching out and offering telemedicine, connects with their doctors, home sample collection and medical home delivery.

Meanwhile at Wockhardt Hospitals, the employees, “in the lower rung in IT have now been given specific access to certain applications, to service issues and tickets. Hitherto it was limited only to system admin or IT head,” says Koppar. The finance department sans the billing staff usually works from the office but they have also been given a laptop and are working from home. The billing has to be done at the hospital. But with skeleton staff.

The Medanta leadership is fully cognizant on harnessing IT in delivering better healthcare. The IT infrastructure has been regularly refreshed in the last 5 years which has helped to sail in this tough time.

All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS)
As the world fights a deadly pandemic, All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) has enabled their OPD services to be run telephonically on LAVA Z41 smartphones. As a part of the emergency measures taken by AIIMS in Delhi, Rishikesh, Patna and Jhajjhar after shutting down OPD services to fight the risk of community spread of COVID-19. AIIMS has initiated telephonic consultation facility for regular patients to give them access to medical facilities even during the 21 day country wide lockdown.

To be updated…