NRCeS – HealtheLife – Bettering healthcare through data

The second user meet of the National Resource Centre for e-Health Standards(NRCeS) was held at All India Institute of Medical Sciences(AIIMS), New Delhi on 28th November 2018, Wednesday. The full day event was attended by Shri. Lav Agarwal, Joint Secretary, MoH&FW, healthcare and technology professionals from AIIIMS, representatives of many government & public sector organizations involved in eHealth standards implementation, large healthcare organizations and healthcare IT startups. The event was characterized by informative presentations, discussions and deliberations on different aspects of EHR standards adoption across the country.

The focus of this year’s event was the adoption and incorporation of SNOMED CT in clinical IT systems.

The major highlights of the day included the following

Key note address on the Role of Training & Implementation Support in Standard Adoption by Dr Karanvir Singh, Chief Medical Information Officer, Apollo Hospital New Delhi
Presenttaion on the Experience of Adoption and Use of Clinical Terminology at AIIMS, New Delhi by Dr. Sushil Kumar Meher & Dr. Vivek Gupta
Key note address on Standard enabled Analytics by Dr. Suman Bhusan Bhattacharyya, Founder & CEO at Bhattacharyyas Clinical Records Research & Informatics LLP
Key note address on the Need based Clinical Terminology Extension in Health IT system by Mr. Dileep V S, Founder HealtheLife Venture LLP

Along the course of the day, team members from NRCeS explained about the work being done by their team to support government departments, private organizations and healthcare IT companies to adopt EHR standards.

This event was of special importance to HealtheLife as we were invited to deliver a keynote address in recognition of the breathtaking work that we are doing in EHR.Network, our standards based open EHR platform and our pioneering effort in the adoption of EHR standards to Ayurveda, Yoga and Naturopathy through AyushEHR. The keynote address on ‘Need based Clinical Terminology Extension in Health IT system ‘ delivered by our co-founder Dileep V S was well received and generated a lot of discussions from the other participants. Many participants expressed interest in knowing more about our work in the future.

We thank Mr. Gaur Sunder, Joint Director & Chief Investigator, Ms. Manisha Mantri, Project Lead, Mr. Achyut Patil, Education and Training, Ms. Neetu Verma, NRCeS Promotion & Dissemination and other NRCeS Team members for the well organized and informative event and are looking forward to the next edition of the event.

The NRCeS and CDAC organized the first Users’ meet for all the stakeholders and professionals working in the area of EHR standards adoption from across the country. The initiative was to bring together all the stakeholders to share their experiences with EHR standards adoption and create a platform to collaborate in the future.

The meet had a mix of representatives from the different sides of the adoption spectrum that included the government officials, doctors, hospitals, technology companies and professionals. The forum was an informal discussion where representatives from each of the areas presented details of their work, level and success in standards adoption and the problems that they are facing.

HealtheLife was represented by Dileep. The meeting was a very heartening experience as we realized that our understanding of the standards and the extent of adoption that we have been able to achieve puts us among the leaders. Among the large number of participants, HealtheLife was the only company working on standards adoption for healthcare practices other than Allopathy, which again makes us a pioneer innovating new use cases for EHR standards adoption.

The intent of the meet was for the CDAC and NRCeS representatives to collate the discussions and observations made by the participants and present to the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare(MOHFW) for their suitable action.

The meet had a very good attendance with participants travelling from all over India to be in Pune for the day and showed the commitment of the community in ensuring that EHR standards are adopted as per the vision of the Government of India. The meeting highlighted the high levels of enthusiasm and encouraging success so far and the long journey ahead for the community. We could learn some best practices that others have adopted and hope to use it to further improve the usability of our solutions.

Another takeaway from the meet was the initiatives that are happening under AYUSH ministry to create an Ayurveda extension to SNOMED CT and their commitment to bringing EHR standards adoption in the AYUSH Sector. This again validates the direction that HealtheLife has taken with AyushEHR.

As part of our commitment to this great community, we plan to publish a series of articles analysing the standards and explaining the key concepts in a simplified language that can be understood by a wider audience. Please come back once in a while to explore our blog.