“Medanta has creatively applied technology to its specific needs”

Medanta (Global Health Limited) is one of the largest private multi-specialty tertiary care providers operating in the North and East regions of India. The company has a network of five hospitals currently in operation (Gurugram, Indore, Ranchi, Lucknow, and Patna.

Rajiv Sikka, Group CIO and Head of Information Technology, Medanta, takes us through the smart technology initiatives launched by the leading hospital based in Gurugram.

What is the motivation behind implementing smart technologies in hospital settings? Latest trends in this space and impact on operational efficiency?

 Being young and having no legacy, Medanta leadership under CMD, Dr Naresh Trehan, has the advantage of being first movers in adapting many digital technologies. Medanta has creatively applied technology to its specific needs and not for the sake of it. The levers for digitization are one or more of the factors like better clinical outcome, service excellence, operational efficiency and revenue assurance. Yet the focus area for all IT initiatives is around the four above-mentioned objectives, but emphasis is always on the patient first approach.  For example, we co-created a system to ensure proper allocation of appropriate nurses with the right skills to the right patient at the right time. The solution has resulted in enhanced patient satisfaction due to improved care experience and better clinical outcome.

Any specific examples how Medanta has been taking initiatives to integrate smart technologies and so far how have these positively impacted quality of patient care?

There are many initiatives which are in different stages of the flight. We aligned with an AI company having rich experience in detecting TB in chest X-ray. Before it was deployed in production, the algorithm was fine-tuned over the time under the guidance of expert radiologists. It automates chest X-ray interpretation for TB and reduces misdiagnosis, under-diagnosis & time to treatment. It is deployed in mobile vans for detecting TB in chest X-rays in remote areas. Unfortunately, worldwide in general and particularly in India, the radiologist to patient ratio is low. And when radiologists are overburdened with the high volume of chest X-rays reporting, the AI algorithm helps in two dimensions – time and quality.

Blood transfusion process safety has traditionally received less attention compared to transfusion transmitted infections, blood component safety and quality. At Medanta we implemented a solution which digitizes the transport of blood from blood bank to bedside using a unique QR code generated for the intended patient. The transport box only unlocks with the match of the QR code of the relevant patient (by scanning the patient’s wrist band) thus ensuring that the patient is the rightful recipient of the blood bag received from the blood bank.

Very recently, we deployed a vendor-neutral Internet of Things (IOT) platform which automatically captures various clinical details like values and waveforms from various sources, including medical devices, procedures, doctors, and nurses’ observations at the bed side of ICU patients. The platform calculates multiple clinical scores like fluid balances and significantly reduce burdensome documentation efforts and also replace cumbersome manual charting.

Smart hospitals generate vast amounts of patient and operational data. How are data management and security addressed in these environments?

 We, at Medanta, are cognizant that information security is critical, especially when the patient’s health-related information is concerned. A comprehensive data governance is the backbone of security and is the guiding principle for implementation of proven technologies accessing and sharing data securely across entities. External facing applications are compliant with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPPA). The access to information is protected at two levels, first at the firewall level and second at the user authentication level. Additionally, all apps have zero-foot print which means nothing is stored on the mobile devices and information is always pulled from the server in line with information security norm.

*This interview was first published in September 2023 edition of the BioVoice eMagazine.