Visakhapatnam: App to help handle bed shortage effectively

Visakhapatnam: At a time when Visakhapatnam is recording more than 1,000 coronavirus cases a day, district administration has come up with an app 'District Covid Hospitals Management System' to check the availability of beds in government, private and teaching hospitals.

Initiated and designed by district collector V Vinay Chand, the app shows category-wise availability of beds in hospitals which will be updated by the respective nodal officer once in every four hours.

Such a platform not only aids in knowing the current status of the bed availability in 63 hospitals in Visakhapatnam but also helps in diverting the needy patients to occupy the beds through continuous monitoring.

While category 'A' indicates the availability of Covid beds in government and teaching hospitals, private institutions fall under category 'B'.

"Again, the beds are broadly classified into four sections – ICU beds with ventilators, ICU beds without ventilators, oxygen beds and normal beds. District officers will be the nodal officers in hospitals and they will update the occupancy status every four hours," collector told The Hans India.

With the support of the helpdesk team, equipped with Android devices, in 63 hospitals, nodal officers will update the data.

Explaining further about the platform, additional district informatics officer from the National Informatics Centre S H Pasha says, "Last year, the app came in handy when the pandemic reached its peak. Four days back, we restarted using the app. It is quite useful to keep a tab on the occupancy level and fill the beds accordingly."

Next, the district administration is planning to introduce a similar mechanism in Covid Care Centres (CCC) as well. "The District Covid Care Centre Management System serves as an effective tool to check the occupancy level in CCCs across the district. At present, there are two such centres in Visakhapatnam. One in Mudasarlova and the other in Bakkannapalem," adds Vinay Chand.

Depending on the availability of beds, the 104 call centre at the collectorate will be alerted with the occupancy and the information thus updated aids in tackling the problem of bed shortage effectively.

The app created for the district administration is accessed by the officials concerned by keying in a user ID and a password.