‘Unique ID card should include medical data’

"The Union government's Biometrics Unique Social Identification card should also include basic medical data of an individual. This will help doctors to treat emergency cases better, without wasting any time during the crucial golden hour, especially in accidents and trauma cases," said Shailesh Niyogi, board director, Lokmanya Hospitals.

Niyogi was speaking during a panel discussion on "The Impact of IT revolution on healthcare" at the 2nd Annual Healthcare Expansion Summit India, organised in Goa on June 2 and June 3. The panel included experts from Hinduja Healthcare, Raheja Hospital and Fortis Healthcare.

"Transformation and growth of healthcare industry can happen with the support of IT. India has become a superpower in the software industry and can also become super power in medical industry and medical tourism. In order to reach there, it is very important that we add lot of value in terms of implementation of maintaining E-medical record systems (EMR)", Niyogi said.

EMR not only help in maintaining records in organised way for future references, but also reduces cost and saves time, resulting in better patient care, he added.

While discussing implications of cloud computing (which refers to the on-demand provision of computational resources data, software etc on internet) for the healthcare sector, and the role cloud computing can play in providing a unified portal for healthcare provider, Niyogi said, "Revolution in IT in terms of cloud computing will make treatment cheaper and faster. IT will help improve efficiency of the hospital for patients delight, starting from admission to rehabilitation, in his normal life."

"However, healthcare industry should not forget that automation and transformation should not lose the human interface with patient," he added.

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