Health profiling to be a game-changer

​Hyderabad: Health profiling of every citizen is top on Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao's priority list, which he has emphasised during his first media interaction after election results were announced on December 11. The Health department is very confident of taking up the big challenge of profiling which no other state in the country has done until now. Officials cite the example of Kanti Velugu screenings, which everyone thought was a Himalayan task considering eye screenings and surgeries if necessary for 3.5 crore populace of Telangana. 

Health profiling involves creation of a unique electronic health record (EHR) on the lines of Aadhaar that records personal details. Every person would have an EHR that is unique to him or her and will have all details of the medical history, including hospitals visits with date and time, treatments and procedures undergone, diagnostic tests done and medication. 

All state-run hospitals including PHCs, CHCs, district and area hospitals, teaching hospitals will be integrated with this system so that doctors can just go through patient's health profile on their tablet and prescribe further tests if needs and give treatment.

All the state-run hospitals, including PHCs, CHCs, district and area hospitals, teaching hospitals will be integrated with this system so that doctors can just go through patient's health profile on their mobile devices. Doctors may prescribe further diagnostic tests depending on the requirement for current treatment and procedures.

Once EHR is created, even private and corporate hospitals will be given permissions to access the data. However, the main objective is to get all state-hospitals to make use of EHR and then engage with private hospitals to see how they could make better use of this concept to serve people better.

Creation of EHR as part of health profiling will prove beneficial to doctors and patients, especially in government hospitals. The past medical details of the patient will be at fingertips of the doctors once they take a glance at the electronic record. If a patient who took medication in a district hospital or PHC in the village later visits a government hospital in the city, the doctors can check the medication given to him and prescribe further tests if needed or start their treatment to mitigate the health problem.

TRS government's focus is to ensure all state-run hospitals make use of EHR facility for improving medical treatments and services for people. With the improvement of infrastructure and facilities and bringing in novel schemes like KCR Kits and Kanti Velugu, foot-falls at government hospitals has increased considerably and creation of EHR will push it up further.

At present most of the corporate hospitals, having multiple branches in the state capital and other towns and cities have developed their own electronic medical record (EMR) that can be accessed at any of their branches.

EMR will not have complete information like EHR, but it will give brief information about details of the patient, last visit dates and doctor consulted and prescriptions given by the doctor. Information regarding diagnostic tests is not preserved and also this information is not shared by one corporate hospital to another corporate hospital of different management. 

EHR is different from EMR, in a sense, as all corporate and private hospitals can access and share the information within themselves and with other hospitals anywhere in the State.

“EHR creation, as part of health profile scheme, is a herculean task. But there are life-long benefits with it. Also, the patient's data and his hospital visits and tests and prescriptions have to be uploaded "real-time" so that when the patient visits another doctor in a different hospital can start treatment after simply taking a look at the profile," an official from IT wing of a leading corporate hospital said, not wishing to be quoted.