AIIMS Bhubaneswar to go paperless, start e-hospital implementation from January

Bhubaneswar: In line with the trend of digitalizing hospitals, the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), Bhubaneswar, is all set to go paperless from January 1, 2023, by launching e-hospital facilities for patients.

The announcement was made by the Union minister of state for health and family welfare Bharati Pravin Pawar while she was reviewing the functionality and probable improvements in the services of the apex institute so that patients can get seamlessly affordable and accessible health facilities.

The implementation of the e-hospital facilities at the apex institute will reduce the long queue of patients at the hospital which has become the primary focus of the government and provide the ability to control the increasing footfall of around 5,000 per day. With this digital version, patients will no longer have to roam around carrying their medical records and stand in long queues for appointments.

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An e-Hospital is an open-source health information management system (HMIS) that is configurable and easily customizable with multi-tenancy support. It is designed to deploy in cloud infrastructure to manage multiple hospitals seamlessly. Addressing all major functional areas of the hospital, the e-hospital facility includes online patient registration (OPD, Casualty, Appointment & ORS), online emergency registration, online billing and pharmacy.

All the above facilities will eliminate excessive footfall at the hospital providing more benefits to the patients as they will no longer need to wait at the hospital for OPD tickets, appointments etc. The system will reduce the use of paper and streamline services through digital mode.

According to TNIE, the waiting line at the pharmacy will be also reduced since the patients after getting checked by the doctor will get an electronic prescription with a digital signature of the treating doctor to avail medicine from any pharmacy.

While assessing the AIIMS's functioning, the minister made a number of recommendations to alleviate the facility's reasonably high footfall and prolonged patient wait times. She underlined the necessity for a structured patient referral service in many healthcare systems.

On December 4, Pawar visited the ICMR Regional Medical Research Centre, Bhubaneshwar which has been conducting research on locally prevailing communicable and non-communicable diseases, tribal health, and malnutrition in Odisha and adjoining states.

During her Odisha tour, Pawar also met the State Health Officials and discussed with their various challenges and bottlenecks in providing the best healthcare service like shortage of health professionals, etc. She also released a book "Odi-Sci: The Odyssey of the women scientists of Odisha" which showcases the role of Women Scientists in Odisha.

Also read- AIIMS Delhi To Go Paperless From 2023