Healthcare accessibility at “Bottom of the Pyramid”: A study of scope of eHealth in India
Introduction
According to World Health Organization (WHO) World Health Statistics 2013, India has a ratio of 6.5 doctors, 10 nurses and 9 beds per 10,000 people compared to the global average is of 13.9 doctors, 29 nurses and 30 beds. In order to meet the healthcare requirement of its population of 1.25 billion, India needs an additional 1.54 million doctors, 2.4 million nurses and 2.6 million beds. At the same time the healthcare facilities are heavily concentrated in the urban areas because of higher average revenue per operating bed (ARPOB) while more than 68 percent of the population reside in rural areas. Out of these 700 million people residing …show more content…
(HIMSS Enterprise Systems Steering Committee , 2010).
In 2007, the National Knowledge Commission (NKC), an advisory body for the Government of India, came up with recommendations for setting up an Indian Health Information Network, establishing national standards for health informatics and clinical terminology and for creation of a common national EHR. (HIMSS Enterprise Systems Steering Committee , 2010)
At the healthcare provider level, the adoption of Electronic Health Records in India is at a nascent stage. Hospitals in the metro cities have started implementing “electronic records” for basic utilities such as registration, recording of demographics of patients and billing purpose. Few large corporate hospitals though have implemented full EMR systems that have functionalities such as clinical order entry, documentation and transmission and support for clinical decision but they are not actually using these capabilities to the
Introduction
According to World Health Organization (WHO) World Health Statistics 2013, India has a ratio of 6.5 doctors, 10 nurses and 9 beds per 10,000 people compared to the global average is of 13.9 doctors, 29 nurses and 30 beds. In order to meet the healthcare requirement of its population of 1.25 billion, India needs an additional 1.54 million doctors, 2.4 million nurses and 2.6 million beds. At the same time the healthcare facilities are heavily concentrated in the urban areas because of higher average revenue per operating bed (ARPOB) while more than 68 percent of the population reside in rural areas. Out of these 700 million people residing …show more content…
(HIMSS Enterprise Systems Steering Committee , 2010).
In 2007, the National Knowledge Commission (NKC), an advisory body for the Government of India, came up with recommendations for setting up an Indian Health Information Network, establishing national standards for health informatics and clinical terminology and for creation of a common national EHR. (HIMSS Enterprise Systems Steering Committee , 2010)
At the healthcare provider level, the adoption of Electronic Health Records in India is at a nascent stage. Hospitals in the metro cities have started implementing “electronic records” for basic utilities such as registration, recording of demographics of patients and billing purpose. Few large corporate hospitals though have implemented full EMR systems that have functionalities such as clinical order entry, documentation and transmission and support for clinical decision but they are not actually using these capabilities to the