Health Ministry to form ICT working group

NEW DELHI, INDIA: The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare has agreed to form a working group on Information and Communication Technology for transforming the healthcare sector in India after a proposal made by Apollo Group Consortium which included known players from health and ICT industry.

“We at the ministry have started looking at technology like telemedicine, e-billing, electronics medical records and others such things very seriously,” said K. Sujatha Rao, Secretary, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare while speaking at first international conference on transforming health with IT on Tuesday evening.

“Now there is the need for the government, insurance regulators, private players and other stakeholders to come together on a common platform and taking this initiative (transforming healthcare with IT) forward. We would like to constitute a committee where we can have experts on this from both public and private sector,” she added.

Rao mentioned that the government has realized the need of sitting with stakeholders in health industry to set standard protocols across the health industry as it will make access to health services simple for common man. She remarked that the technology that should be adopted by Indian healthcare industry should bring down the cost of delivering health services instead of taking it out of reach of poor people.

“Somewhere down the line, we need to think about rational use of technology. It should be affordable for poorest of the country. This is a challenge and it is our responsibility to come over this challenge,” said Rao.

Dinesh Trivedi, Minister of State for Health and Family Welfare, who was the chief guest on the occasion, acknowledged the need of technology for transformation of health care with IT.

“Our strength in India is technology. If you want to treat close to 1.3 billion people of this country, you need technology to reach them out. We at government have done brainstorming and realized that there is need to create awareness among masses for which we are creating national portal on health. It will be first national portal which will guide people on health issues, places to go for treatment and other information vital for them,” said Trivedi.

Trivedi mentioned the concept of creating such portal has been envisaged under the project i-Hind and the first draft of the project is ready.

“We kept this project open for idea and the response has been awesome. Around 80 experts from seven different countries contributed to the draft. We have not met any of these experts but it is technology that connected them with us for this constructive effort,” said Trivedi.

Trivedi assured that his ministry would take up the recommendation made by Apollo Group Consortium.

He also emphasized that India should come with its own model on use of IT.

Apollo Group consortium, lead by Apollo hospitals, proposed to the ministry considers national standards on use of information technology in health care.

“Once standards are in place and made integral to the delivery of health care services, we are sure that we can reach billions of people and save life. IT is the need of healthcare industry,” said Sangita Reddy, executive director, Apollo Hospitals Group and managing director, Apollo Health Street.

Apollo Group consortium comprises Apollo Hospitals, Tata Consultancy Services, CISCO, Panasonic, Intel, GE, Aircel and supported by NASSCOM, Confederation of Indian Industry, Telemedicine Society of India, Indian Association of Medical Informatics, International society for telemedicine and research.

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