Need for skilled personnel in Healthcare services

I have been a strict proponent of increasing use of eHealth tools to ensure democratization of better quality health services, best quality healthcare and paperless clean environment for ALL.

Availability of a skilled workforce is definitely one very obvious obstacle in countries like India and Brazil.One of the challenges to implementing health information and communication technology is the need for a skilled workforce that understands health care, information and communication technology, and the people and organizational challenges involved. The intersection of these areas is commonly known as the discipline of biomedical and health informatics (or health informatics for short)

This paper explains the need for skilled and trained professionals for better utilization of information technology and the various peculiarities faced in Developing countries.

E-health and m-health applications hold vast promise to improve global health. As these projects develop, leaders need to be cognizant of the need for a well-trained workforce to lead their implementation. An ideal approach will include needs assessment as well as education and training opportunities for that workforce. Successful local examples can be expanded into larger networks whose scale can be leveraged to more rapidly and effectively disseminate them. Such an approach should also foster the establishment of academic partnerships and centers of excellence in education and research in developing countries for sustainable capacity building while still being responsive to local needs

Read the original article on Health Affairs.

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Three Points about Medical Informatics in India.

As knowledge expands and requires better management, role of I.T in health care can only become more important. India has a large number of trained I.T professionals and is in a position to leverage its Brain power to take Health informatics to new heights. As i have argued before, smart use of health informatics can also help us attain Health rights for all in many ways (lower costs, better quality, better informed patients, e.t.c). Here, i have tried to showcase a few points about Use of Health Informatics in India as well as the various educational courses available within India.

The Three major uses of Health informatics in India
1) For better training of Health care professionals ( includes Doctors, Paramedicals and Non-medicals)- e.learning
2) For improved delivery of high quality health care services to the remote areas.- Telemedicine,EMRs, CDSS.
3) To bring about a transparency in public health care delivery system.(e-governance)- Public participation

The three major obstacles to Health Informatics in India.
1) Inadequate Skills of health care personnel/others
2) Inadequate Physical infrastructure
3) Inadequate access to I.T ( Digital divide).

The Three major Post Graduate Health care Informatics courses in India
1) Medvarsity online P.G Diploma in Medical Informatics. , associated with Apollo group of Hospitals
2) Amrita Institute of Medical sciences MSc/ P.G.Diploma in Medical Informatics , at Kochi,India.
3) Post Graduate Programs at BII (Bioinformatics Institute of India), Noida, with good industry integration.

The Three short Online courses for Medical Informatics in India-
1) eHCF School of Medical Informatics, Delhi provides Certificate course in medical informatics
2) IAHI online course on Health Informatics
3) BII provides various online/distance educations courses in Health care Informatics.

In view of the fast changing world of medical informatics, it is essential to formulate a flexible syllabus rather than a rigid one for incorporating into the regular curriculum of medical and paramedical education. Only after that one may expect all members of the health care delivery systems to adopt and apply medical informatics optimally as a routine tool for their services.
Suptendra Nath Sarbadhikari

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-A Fantastic Medical Informatics conference in India

Just back from the Meditel 2008, the fifth International conference on Medical informatics and Telemedicine. The theme of the conference this year was “ICT for Medical Education and Research” and there were some pretty sharp presentations in Medical e.learning. Hopefully, as promised, most of the presentations would be available on the MCSI website soon.

The few presentations i thoroughly enjoyed included,

• E-Learning- Current trends in India- by Dr.Balasubramanyam, Prof. and head, Dept. of Anatomy, SJMC, Bangalore.

• Cochrane Collaboration- Informed healthcare in South Asia- Dr.Pratap Tharyan

• Improving Healthcare via Transparent monitoring- Mr.Bill Thies, MIT and Microsoft ( use of microchip within pill boxes to monitor compliance in National health programs like DOTS India.)

• World”s first prepaid service for Doctors consultation from any Phone- by Mr.Sunil Kulkarni, Group President, Oxigen Services (India) Pvt. Ltd.( a beautiful concept to allow pre-paying for telephonic medical consultations)

There were a number of other interesting ones, like this Virtual conference using Webex services, via a lowly Tata Indicom plug2surf device !!

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Meditel 2008 @ Chennai, India

Chennai-Image via Wikipedia
The use of ICT ( Information and communication technologies) for Health care in India is still very limited. Most of the efforts in this direction are sporadic and rudderless.There is no dearth of skilled manpower in this field, but a unified plan of action is still awaited.

Medical computer society of India has taken the lead to organize a national conference on Medical informatics and Telemedicine. Under the leadership of Dr.Sunil Shroff, eminent Nephrologist and President of MCSI, the fifth national conference on Medical informatics and telemedicine is scheduled to take place at Sri Ramchandra Medical College & Research Institute, Chennai on 19th-20th December, 2008.

“The conference (as in the past) will bring together decision makers, policy makers, practicing clinicians, healthcare educators and researchers, health administrators, health technologists and IT vendors.Meditel 2008 offers a platform to meet, interact and network with qualified specialists, users, buyers, healthcare providers, industry representatives, researchers and policy makers from India and abroad.

The event will showcase successful products in the Indian healthcare environment and discuss the challenges in their implementation. The use of ICT for ‘Health Education & Research’’ is the theme of this conference.

Meditel 2008 will feature an exhaustive conference program with more than 100 presentations along with workshops on a wide variety of topics to learn about what is latest in e-health and the likely future trends.”

I was a part of Meditel 2006 and can vouch for the quality of discussions held at Centre for Digital Health, Amrita institute of Medical Sciences, Kochi, Kerala.It proved extremely useful to me then and I expect a similar experience this year.