Dr Shweta Talati, Assistant Professor, PGIMER, began her session by referring to Healthcare Sabha’s agenda, India’s public health change strategy: Prioritise, Plan, Practise. She pointed out that amongst the three, putting plans to practice is the most difficult one. Presenting two examples from PGIMER, Chandigarh, she showcased how it seeks solutions through innovations. In the first one, she pointed out that the average length of stay in a hospital is a sensitive indicator and high average length of stay leads to hospital acquired infections, needless suffering of the patients and inefficient utilisation of hospital resources. Therefore PGIMER has installed a Decision Support System, a technology embedded in the existing hospital information system. The programme sends emails and messages to notify consultants if patients have exceeded the average length of stay at the hospital. This helps in monitoring care and its impact includes treatment of more patients with the same number of sanctioned bed strength. She said that due to this technology, the institute was able to treat 3.57 per cent more patients during 2016 than 2015, and 6.2 per cent more patients in 2017.
Her second case study was on effective handling of medico-legal issues. in the public and private sectors. Pointing out that they are usually a tedious and a time consuming task, she threw light on how using technologies like video conferencing makes it easier. She concluded by saying that technology is revolutionising healthcare.