AstraZeneca partners Bengaluru-based firm to digitise healthcare clinics

Bengaluru: AstraZeneca India on Wednesday signed an MoU with Bengaluru-based Docon Technologies for digitising 1,000 clinics across India.

Under the partnership, Docon will equip the identified clinics with customised Electronic Medical Record (EMR) systems enabling clinicians to access complete patient history, and thus, help the clinical community better treat chronic patients and manage long-term complications of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) like diabetes and cardiovascular diseases.

The rising risk of NCD related deaths has necessitated the need for better treatment protocols to reduce mortality rates and hence, having a centralised repository of critical patient history becomes important. The digitisation of small clinics with the support of EMR, teleconsultation, and other additional facilities will provide the doctor and the patient a better opportunity to interact and ensure that there is constant monitoring of the patient and medication adherence.

"As a part of AstraZeneca's continued vision to tackle NCDs at the grassroot level, we are happy to partner with Docon to develop and provide a sustainable way to prevent, identify and manage NCDs across the country. The need for a centralised repository on patient information has been discussed at length but the implementation of this has not been a smooth journey," AstraZeneca India Managing Director Gagandeep Singh said.

"Non-communicable diseases have to be closely monitored and having access to detailed patient history is important for the doctor to impart better treatment and improve patient outcome. Docon helps the doctor not only view patient history digitally but also consult and share the prescription directly on the patient's smartphone," Docon Technologies' Business & Growth Head Akash Valia.

Till now, as a part of the pilot phase, around 200 clinics have been upgraded with many of them being in Tier I and II towns. In addition to providing the clinicians with a three-day in-clinic training for learning and adoption, a dedicated helpline is also being established for the users to understand and resolve technical queries.

In order to ensure safety and privacy, the data of the patient will be fully encrypted and stored in private cloud server to ensure highest security and only clinicians will have access to individual patient data. The programme is also fully compliant to Telemedicine guidelines issued by NITI Aayog in March 2020.