When Digital Meets Health

Why GoI’s new initiative has the potential to revolutionise patient care

- Devi Shetty

If 200 patients spend one night in an American hospital, one in 200 could die due to a medical error, but not due to medical negligence.

Getting admitted to an American hospital is ten times riskier than skydiving, despite American hospitals being considered as one of the safest spaces on our planet.

We need to make hospitals very safe for patients. When we admit our loved ones to a hospital why do we always inquire about which doctor is going to take care of the patient? Why is it that when we board an aircraft, we never ask about the work experience of the pilot? This is primarily because of the regimented processes adopted by the healthcare and aviation industry.

Unlike in the healthcare industry, no pilot can have his own style of take-off, cruising or landing an aircraft. Pilots strictly follow prescribed protocol, their moves, manoeuvres, and conversations within the cockpit are recorded and stored on a ‘Black box’. In case of a crash everything about the reason for the crash is accessed, revealed and studied to ascertain the cause of the incident. Any human error causing a crash becomes material for precaution in the future. Essentially it is a technology with a protocol that is rigidly adhered to within the aviation industry, making it one of the safest industries in the world.

Unfortunately, in healthcare delivery, it is difficult to follow treatment protocols since over 90% of hospitals in developing countries including India do not have Electronic Medical Records (EMR).

EMR will help us document real-time events happening around a patient, inside the hospital with seamless movement of data between patients, machines, labs, nurses, technicians and doctors on a mobile platform.