In an exclusive conversation with CXO News & APAC News Network, Mitali Biswas, CIO, C K Birla Hospitals reveals how her hospital is leveraging both traditional and new-gen technologies to improve its operational efficiency, productivity and security.
What are the major IT deployments done at C K Birla Hospital?
We have undergone major IT deployments in the past 2-3 years with an objective to improve patient care, operational efficiency and collaboration across the functions. Some of the key projects deployed are as follows:
Hospital Information Systems (HIS): We replaced our old HIS system with a new age Healthcare system on cloud. The new system has enabled us to increase efficiencies across departments and digitize the patient records. We are also driving the adoption of EMR, both for OPD and IPD. This also forms the base for capturing the data, which we are feeding into a data lake for analytical purposes.
Patient Feedback System: We take patient feedback seriously and the process was digitized so that relevant feedback can be captured at all touch points. The system not only captures the patient feedback through various modes but also provides analyticshighlighting the key areas of improvement.
Infrastructure Upgrade: Most of the hospitals struggled to meet the business requirements posed by the Covid 19 Pandemic. Taking lesson from it, we upgraded our infrastructure and created a clear strategy to move to cloud. We have already moved our critical applications to a private cloud and gone for SaaS platform for the critical ones. In order to achieve it, we upgraded our IT Infrastructure to ensure system performance, secured access and disaster recovery.
What were the technological changes that happened at C K Birla Hospital after the pandemic?
The COVID-19 pandemic acted as a catalyst for rapid technological advancements across sectors, especially healthcare. The pandemic fuelled the adoption of telehealth and telemedicine solutions for remote patient consultations and we were no exception. People are now more health conscious and the industry started to see a shift from a Reactive to a Predictive healthcare. This has resulted in the increase use of wearables, remote patient monitoring and increased use of data to drive business and clinical decisions.
At our Hospitals, the IT roadmap had to be aligned with the new shifts and requirements in the industry. Move to cloud was one of the major impacts enabling us to provide greater flexibility, resilience and shorten the time to market for the new products. The negative side of the increased adoption of technology was in the increased threat from cyber-attacks. We have increased our investment in the security solutions, ensuring security at all levels, end point, network, application and cloud.
How is C K Birla Hospital leveraging data and analytics to improve operational efficiency of the hospitals?
We generate a lot of data from various sources and the insights generated from this data guide a lot of business decisions which improves the Operational Efficiency. The key ones are mentioned below.
Inventory Control: The consumption patterns of medical supplies and pharmaceuticals helps the Inventory team to maintain optimal stock levels, preventing shortages and overstocking.
Faster Discharge Planning: Fast Discharge is a challenge that most of the Hospitals face. A detailed analysis of the discharge data is helping teams to identify areas for improvement and expedite patient discharge procedures.
Bed Management: Hospitals always face a challenge of limited bed availability and improving the length of stay of a patient enables the Hospital to cater to more patients. Data analytics helps to predict bed occupancy and allocate resources effectively. It helps to optimize processes for patient admissions, discharges, and transfers to reduce lengths of stay and free up beds faster.
Cost Optimization: Identify areas for cost reduction, such as unnecessary supplies or inefficient practices, leading to better financial management.
Performance Evaluation: Track key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure departmental efficiency and identify areas for improvement.
How significant are concerns towards cybersecurity and data privacy for C K Birla Hospital?
The increased adoption of technology has also increased the risk of cyber attacks in the healthcare industry. We manage highly sensitive data that includes Electronic Health Information (EHI), which includes a patient’s medical history, diagnoses, medications, and other sensitive details. A data breach exposing this information can have devastating consequences. Stolen patient data can be used for identity theft, fraud, or even targeted marketing of unrelated medical products. Breaches can also disrupt access to critical medical records, potentially delaying treatment or compromising patient safety.
As we are increasingly reliant on digital systems for patient care, billing, and communication, this results inmore entry points for cyberattacks. Cyber security is taken very seriously and we have implemented multiple technology solutions to secure the data at all layers and ensuring only secured access. There is also a lot of focus on increasing awareness amongst the users on Cyber Threats and frequent assessments/phishing exercises are carried out to protect data from any human error or action.
How do you manage the operational skill sets of your IT team and how do you bring other stakeholders like doctors, nurses and admins into the tech ecosystem?
Managing the skillsets of the IT team in line with the fast-changing technology is always a challenge. We manage with a balance of internal training and requesting the expertise from our partners. It is important that the IT team should be skilled in the technologies of your most critical applications. Also, the Infra, Network and Security are key to the managing of Hospital operations and it is important to have internal skills in these areas to manage business continuity. The IT Team is encouraged to pick up new skill with a mix of online trainings and on the job learning. For niche skills, we depend on the partner ecosystem to provide us with the expertise needed.
Change Management and Adoption with stakeholders like Doctors and Nurses is the most challenging part in any Digital Transformation project. There is no easy answer to solve this problem but there are some strategies that can help to foster a more inclusive tech ecosystem .Communication is crucial for building trust, rapport, and engagement among the stakeholders, as well as for ensuring that everyone is on the same page and working towards the same goals. It also helps if the key stakeholders are involved from the start of the project to solicit their input, feedback, and participation in the project activities and decisions. It also helps to identify and address any issues, risks, or challenges that may arise during the project, and leverage their strengths and resources to overcome them.
How are you looking at leveraging new gen technologies like generative AI, robotics, IoT among others to optimize hospital productivity?
The new-gen technologies offer a transformative opportunity for hospitals to optimize productivity, improve patient care, and deliver a more efficient and cost-effective healthcare system.
Generative AI has the ability to produce fresh data, enhance diagnostics, personalize treatment approaches, and expedite the discovery of new drugs . The technology can be used to analyze patient data to generate personalized treatment plans, predict potential drug interactions, and suggest targeted therapies. Gen-AI-enabled technology could also streamline health insurance prior authorization and claims processing.
Gen-AI chatbots can address common hospital employee IT and HR questions, all of which could improve employee experience and reduce time and money spent on hospital administrative costs. The chatbots can also be extended to patients to answer queries related to Hospital and improve the overall Patient experience.
Robotic surgery systems offer greater precision, control, and improved outcomes for complex procedures. This is already in use in many hospitals including ours. Robotic systems can also be used to automate medication dispensing and distribution, reducing errors and improving efficiency.
Wearable devices and sensors can continuously monitor vital signs, activity levels, and other health data, enabling remote patient monitoring and early detection of complications. These are being used for Post operative care and provide real time insights to clinicians. This helps clinicians to take timely action and prevent any emergencies.
The new age technologies have the potential to reimagine much of the healthcare industry in ways that we have not seen to date with previously available technologies. However, it will take some time to mature and get this into main stream business.
