‘Social innovation technology to hospitals like AIIMS would lead to a better health condition’

Hitachi India has been recently selected by the New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO) to undertake a feasibility study in India for an ICT-based green hospital demonstration project which facilitates hospital’s energy saving. Naotoshi Nishida, VP, Infrastructure Systems Company, Hitachi India speaks about the concept of ICT green building and their demonstration project in India, to Raelene Kambli Excerpts

How does ICT green concept contribute to the public sector, such as healthcare?

The rapid growth of the healthcare services demand does not complement the supply even with so many efforts made by the public sector hospitals like AIIMS within the metropolitan cities like Delhi. Hitachi conducted its initial site survey prior to the proposal and found that ICT green concept would benefit and contribute to this demand gap situation with the overall energy/utility management. The effort made so far in this area lacks vision and intention to improve the energy management and data maintenance including its storage. Hitachi’s objective is aimed at contributing to the welfare of the patients by enhancing the overall efficiency in such hospitals leading to the healthcare services being provided to more number of patients compared to the present scenario. This would also lead to a single doctor attending to more number of patients thereby reducing the energy cost and providing quality health services by analysing the stored data effectively. Our aim would be to achieve a quality aspect at AIIMS.

What does it mean to be a ICT-based green hospital in the Indian context?

With regards to the Indian context, most of patients who line up at the out-patient department (OPD) of a public hospital like AIIMS are exempted from making the actual payment which is contrary to the fact that social expenses for such services are increasing dramatically.

If the government extends its support and pledges to provide quality healthcare services to everybody in India, it would cater to the current patient demand and projects for large hospitals can be taken up incepting such green hospital concept everywhere. It would also be wise to have more efficient operation within the existing facilities in order to increase the number of patients being treated everyday.

Tell us about your ICT-based green hospital project in India?

In order to make the ICT-based green hospital project a reality especially at AIIMS in Delhi, Hitachi will be conducting an energy conservation management system demonstration which would include renewable energy, high efficiency utility equipment, hospital ICT system integration/ consolidation and data centre facility with energy saving technology. The energy management system that would be installed will have the capacity to visualise energy thereby optimising its management at AIIMS, Delhi.

What are the benefits associated with it?

As a prelude to this project, Hitachi would be considering replacing the current energy management equipment like chillers and replacing them with high energy efficient chillers for better energy consumption in the area of air conditioning. Hitachi would also consider setting up solar generation system at the roof top of the hospital with a more efficient back up system (DG and battery) in order to reduce energy consumption per patient. This would hugely lead to a reduction in the social expenditure for the government.

What are the challenges in creating a ICT-based green hospital?

We believe it is the first-of-its-kind project where energy management and IT Systems will be integrated at the same time. It is a challenge in itself to initiate this project. AIIMS on a daily basis gets unlimited number of patients, with the hospital running beyond its capacity, therefore replacing the current energy management and IT system with the more efficient one would be a challenge in itself.

What should be the way forward?

After successful implementation of this project at AIIMS Delhi, Hitachi would like to explore and extend this project to other such large hospitals in India. Our thought is to integrate all AIIMS within the country with this concept so that facilities can be utilised commonly and more efficiently.

Hitachi firmly believes that providing this social innovation technology to hospitals like AIIMS would lead to a better health condition for the patients.

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