Health Live, 25 December 2015
Ekta Purohit
J.P. Nadda, Union Health Minister launched new digital Out Patient Department (OPD) at AIIMS, where appointment with doctors will be made through online to make ease for patients to reach out the services at AIIMS.
The project was supported by Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) under Public Private Partnership (PPP) model will help around 10,000 people daily to reduce long waiting time.
The new OPD includes new waiting hall with seating capacity of 2, 550, additional seating capacity, 120 patients care coordinators for patients assistance and guidance and four large LED appointment status boards displaying the real time appointment availability for increased transparency and visibility.
It is dedicated to the people of India and it is a new lead to the health services in country. On talking about system Nadda said “yha chalta hai, its tough to change the ‘chalta hai’ in system of government institutions. This initiative changed this thought by this digitize transformation project.
At the event M.C. Mishra, Director of AIIMS throw the light on the hard work done by the excellent teams of AIIMS and Tata Consultancy Services. This Transformation Project was our first priority and we are happy to launch it today. He thanked Hon’ble ministers Nadda and Piyush Goyal who take this initiative with TCS members N. Chandrasekaran and Girish Krishnamurthy. The team members have been awarded at the ceremony for their tremendous work.
At the ceremony Piyush Goyal , Union Minister for Power said, this is an true example of ‘Good Governance’ as today we are celebrating ‘Good Governance Day’. AIIMS is like a gem for our country and to satisfy the patients here is to give them real happiness.
Apart from OPD launching the Union Health Minister announces many initiatives in health sector to improve the health services in our country. Health Minister announced Kilkari. A major IT initiative, Kilkari is an audio-based mobile service that delivers weekly audio messages to families about pregnancy, child birth and child care. Each pregnant woman and infants mother, registered in Mother and Child Tracking System (MCTS), a web- enabled name-based system to monitor and ensure delivery of full spectrum of services to all pregnant women and children, would receive weekly voice messages relevant to the stage of pregnancy or age of the infant. The 72 messages would reach the targeted beneficiaries from the 4th month of pregnancy until the child is one year old. On an average, the duration of each message is two minutes. Such messages will empower and educate women and parents to help create a better environment in maternal and child health. This service will be provided free to the beneficiaries. In the first phase of implementation, such messages would be sent to the pregnant women and infants mothers in six States in Jharkhand, Odisha, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, and HPDs of Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan. They are being developed in Hindi, English and Odiya languages in the first phase, to be later expanded to other languages to cover the entire country and would benefit over 2 crore pregnant women and 2 crore infants, annually.
The Health Minister also stated that a new mobile-based application, Mobile Academy, has been developed through which about 9000,000 ASHAs will be trained using mobile services. This will aid in enhancing their inter-personal skills. Once registered, ASHAs can access the 240-minute course via their mobile phones. They can then complete the standardized course at their convenience. Digital bookmarking technology enables ASHAs to complete the course at their own pace. The course is divided into eleven chapters each containing four lessons. There is a quiz at the end of each chapter. ASHAs successfully completing the course by securing more than minimum prescribed marks will receive a Certificate of completion from the Government.
As continuation of the Ministrys new IT-based initiatives, Shri Nadda informed about making the Revised National TB Control Programme (RNTCP) more patient-centric. A dedicated toll free number, 1 800 – 1 16 6 6 6 with a call centre is being started to provide round the clock support for patient counselling and treatment support services. This call centre will have trained personnel to provide feedback to patients and also link or refer chest symptomatic persons to RNTCP services. Under this initiative, callers can give a missed call or call to get complete support for diagnosis, treatment and support for the completion of treatment on the national toll free number, the Minister informed. This initiative is being started in the States of Punjab, Haryana, Chandigarh and Delhi.
Nadda also announced M-Cessation. This will be an IT-enabled tool to help tobacco users to quit tobacco. Built on a helpline concept, it will register beneficiaries on the basis of a missed call. The counseling would be done through a two-way SMS process, the Minister informed. All blood banks would be interconnected soon.
By ending his speech he said, both quality and quantity are balanced by AIIMS.
