Fortis Healthcare Ltd, which claims to be the pioneer in deployment of IT, being the first to have a centralized Web based HIS, says it is difficult to implement standards in healthcare. The company CIO, Manish Gupta, speaks about the inhibitors for technology adoption, in an interaction with CIOL. Excerpts:

CIOL: What are your views on the lack of standards in healthcare wherein procedures, medicines, diagnosis, treatment etc are concerned?

Manish Gupta: Standards are easy to talk about, difficult to implement and even more tough to follow. Reality on the ground is fewer doctors, lack of pervasive technology and little clinical protocols. Therefore, the lack of standards is more due to the cause and effect, than due to lack of knowledge or will.

CIOL: How can we think of uniformity in treatment when each individual has a different biological system?

MG: The starting point of any treatment is in identifying the patient profile. Treatment can never be uniform. Clinical pathway of how to decide the treatment is to be standardized.

CIOL: How can systems like "Apollo-IBM health hi-way" promote uniformity in standards?

MG: Portals will bring uniformity depending on the transactions. I haven't seen a single all-round portal across the globe. Health hi-way is also at present for eClaims only, and limited to some TPAs. I am sure that you will soon hear about a true portal that covers patients, providers, pharmacies and labs. However, as I said, the lack of standards is cause-effect.

CIOL: What applications and business procedures has Fortis implemented, and what plans do they have in pipeline in this direction?

MG: We have end-to-end healthcare businesses (hospitals, pharmacies, labs, research, insurance, medical education, nurse staffing). The basic tenet in my IT strategy is in leveraging applications, infrastructure, resources, etc., right across.

We are the first to provide a centralized Web based HIS (hospital information system) called Trak that has clinical and patient management. The backend will be centralized SAP, interfaced with Trak, using HL7 based middleware. All of this will be hosted in a shared data center based on SAN.

ENDS