AIIMS lines up Rs 32 crore IT expansion plan

Balaka Baruah Aggarwal

NEW DELHI: The All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), the premier
medical Institute in the country, has initiated a massive IT expansion program
to streamline and modernize internal processes. The first phase of the exercise
is expected to be completed within six months of signing the contract with the
vendor. The vendor for the project has been finalized and the contract will be
officially signed shortly, informed the deputy director and head computer
facility at AIIMS, Dr RS Tyagi. The institute has lined up around Rs 32 crore
for its expansion plan.



The first phase envisages making all textual information on patients and
laboratory reports available online, while the second phase would look at
connecting the wards and peripheral services like the kitchen, laundry and other
support systems. Patients would be given an identity number through which all
reports could be accessed online.



The project envisages that all hospital processes be made online right from the
moment the patient steps into the hospital as an outdoor patient. Doctors would
record patient data and advice tests online. Patients would be given laboratory
appointments online and after the tests the results would also be made available
online. This would not only reduce work pressure on employees but expected to
accrue huge savings to the hospital. Streamlining processes like registering
outdoor patients or admitting patients in hospitals would result in huge cost
saving which cannot be estimated because there is no account of the expenditure
involved in all these things.



The second phase would see the laboratories connected to the OPDs, wards, OTs,
the teaching blocks as well as the R&D blocks getting connected. Doctors
would be able to retrieve patient data and test reports from any of these
places. This would do away with the need of films and paper work resulting in
savings close to Rs 8 crore annually.

For this to happen, the hospital will have a network of fibre-optic backbone
with a capacity of 34 GBPS. The hospital would also set up two servers with 50
GBPS capacity each.



The ultimate aim of the hospital is to get all its processes online and rollout
its telemedicine initiative. The vision envisages setting up of nodal centers,
which could be affiliates of AIIMS or any other center interested in
participating in the process.



Through telemedicine, experts from the Institute would provide online
consultations. This would help in screening outstation patients so that the
Institute becomes only a referral center and not be burdened with the task of
treating regular diseases.