THE University Hospital of the West Indies (UHWI) is going fully digital by year end as it converts to an electronic hospital management system to overhaul its record-keeping and management functions.

Under this US $1-million investment, local IT solutions company Advanced Integrated Systems (AIS) will be partnering with the Indian-based company Suvarna to deliver what is being touted as one of the most comprehensive hospital information and management systems.

Director of health application at AIS, Shekar Sanumpudi, informed a media briefing held at the hospital’s boardroom last Tuesday that the changeover started on May 1 and should be completed in six months.

Chief Executive Officer at AIS Douglas Halsall said the system will provide end-to-end computerisation of the hospital — from registration to doctors’ desk, bed management, and lab requests to pharmacy.

“The efficiency in the management of drugs, acquired from scarce resources, will be at its best; data on the diagnoses of patients will be recorded and made available, real-time, to decision makers, to recognise and proactively recognise and manage trends, long before they become epidemics,” Halsall projected.

Registration, discharge and even bed management, he said, will be at their most efficient, and patients will not have undue waiting experiences, as they are processed for admission.

“Access to the very latest in procedural ‘best practices’ will be a keystroke away; and, electronic prescriptions will lead to efficiency in dispensing of drugs and will eliminate mistakes due, not only to bad handwriting by the physician, but online drug interaction tests, will prevent other potential risks,” he added.

The system is already in use in over 150 hospitals in India, and is designed to help health care organisations run more efficiently and economically, ensuring quality service and customer satisfaction.

It is said to add value to hospitals by integrating all departments under one roof, such as registration, scheduling, billing, lab, radiology, pharmacy, inventory and other ancillary services. It is built on a modular structure which allows businesses to invest in the modules they need and add modules as their needs grow.

UHWI officials say the new system will help in reducing costs in a number of areas such as X-rays where instead of depending on films, the hospital will be able to transfer a digital image to the ward so a doctor can have immediate access via a computer.

“There is a lot of savings from that because X-ray films are very expensive,” a spokesman for the hospital confirmed.

Additionally, the platform can be accessed by mobile devices including phones and tablets, creating even greater efficiencies in the hospital’s functions and reducing patients’ wait time.

The hospital officials noted that with the introduction of the new system waiting time will be greatly reduced, as clerks will no longer have to search for dockets. The system will also aid in inventory control in the pharmacy and facilitate patient transfers.