Lot of companies are providing the application software in healthcare management and information system, both of which are integral and critical parts of a smart healthcare system project. The idea is to bring the functions of all departments onto a unified platform from a reporting, data collation and data analysis perspective. If healthcare system is integrated and managed through a proper information and management system, then anybody can get access of it starting from primary healthcare unit to specialty centre, both from patient care and administrative perspective. In the process , it becomes much easier for the government to provide much better healthcare services. The need was already there, but only a few states have actually come up for adopting best of IT systems for healthcare.In general terms what basically these software are based on open source software with proprietary database at the backend. The software provides most flexible options in terms of reduced total cost of ownership, maintainability , vendor independency and in addition, it runs on a variety of operating systems. From an architecture perspective , it is extremely scalable and can be easily modified.
Areas like drug and material distribution, inventorying, purchasing and facility management have largely benefited through use of IT. The application also helps to standardize and define different protocols in the system as and when required. All these synchronies towards a significant enhanced quality healthcare service. Equity issues are taken care of by the public sector for those who cannot afford. Private sector is more or less differentiator. Sixty to seventy percent of work is left on the public sector. We need to increase the spending from current 4% to at least double by that. While healthcare IT spending in most emerging Asian economies has increased appreciably, yet certain developed and emerging nations are still lagging behind. Considering the global aspect, judging by the percentage of healthcare IT spending as part of overall national IT spending, Australia tops the chart , followed by China, Malaysia, New zealand, Philippines and Vietnam. The trends and spending patterns of Australia have been found to be most typical in the region, resulting in sustained growth of the market, at a pace that is even higher than many of the currently emerging economies. Public Sector institutions continue to slog or rather decay on account of lack of monitoring mechanisms, lack of management controls system and lack of accountability. In India, public health sector sees highest absentees. Still their incentives are very high. We need to have very strong management controls and IT enabled mechanism to monitor the output. Just Deploying thousands of doctors in the rural areas such as Gujarat is not enough