In the recent times, rapid
advancement in application of information technology has
been evident in almost every sector of industries. However,
surprisingly, it has been noted that most health care
institutions, still maintain most of their patient records
in the form of paper charts or to some extent – self
developed software applications. This scenario has rendered
the almost impossible task of integrating and seamlessly
managing patient’s record across hospitals and clinics for
immediate access to required information in emergency.
Virgo provides a host of
solutions for healthcare industry including Smart Card based
Electronic Health Record, Hospital management system
integrated with Smart Card etc.
A Smart Card can provide
seamless access interface to patient history in form of
Electronic Health Record. As a patient moves between
hospitals, clinics and cities across the country, Smart Card
provides the much needed mobility in form of authentic data
being hosted on the card. Integrity and interoperability is
taken care by introduction of SCOSTA compliant Smart Card.
Smart Card memory can store
basic patient information such as name, address,
photographs, PIN security, to medical information such as
blood type, drug allergies and regular prescribed drugs.
Moreover, by using additional storage media, medical records
can be augmented to include multimedia-rich information such
as scan photography images etc., to facilitate rapid
diagnosis of patient’s potential symptom and problem. In
short, smart card provides the rich benefits of storing
comprehensive, accurate, and up-to-date medical history of a
patient, while offering the ease of mobility in a pocket.
A framework can be defined
to integrate the Smart Card with web based infrastructure to
provide easy access web links to Internet databases to
facilitate wide area access of further information such as a
video of a recent CT scan, high resolution X-ray image scan,
etc globally.
Above system enables Medical
professionals (Doctors, Nurse, and Pharmacist etc.) to have
immediate information regarding patient medical records. In
times of emergency, paramedics and emergency rooms equipped
with card readers can be able to rapidly access potentially
life-saving information about a patient, such as allergies
to medications and chronic medical conditions.
Ideally, the system may
involve two categories of smart cards:
a)
Patient Card
b) Medical Professional Card
Whereas patient card holds
information regarding patient’s history, Medical
professional card can be issued to persons from medical
fraternity. Medical Professional card will not only be used
as an authentication tool for access to a patient’s history
and tracking of such access, but can also be integrated with
Hospital Management System for miscellaneous purposes like
doctor’s attendance, issuance system, access control,
investigation reporting, digital signature, payroll,
electronic purse etc.
Since implementation of such
a system require a consensus across the board, an initial
step can be taken by large organizations such as state
hospitals, health insurance groups and government clinics eg.
CGHS, ESI - which facilitates with convenient audit and
tracking of medical services being provided to individuals
across the panel.
