There will soon come a time when people will be able to predict the possibility of contracting certain diseases 10-15 years from then and take precautionary measures, said Dr Vivek Jawali, director and chief cardiovascular and thoracic surgeon, Wockhardt Hospitals and president of the Indian Association of Cardio Thoracic surgeons.
Jawali said this would be possible with gene mapping technologies. This implies that the future of the healthcare industry lies in participatory medicines.
However, the healthcare sector and the IT industry need to go hand in hand to make greater advances in the medical field.
Speaking on the topic ‘IT in healthcare — doctor’s wish list’ at the Bangalore IT Biz 2009, Jawali said that there has been a huge demographic shift from rural to urban India and people are more aware of healthcare facilities. To add to this, medical tourism is also growing in the country.
“However, without database and ongoing transparent auditing processes in the healthcare sector, we cannot achieve growth,” he said.
Today, the healthcare sector makes minimum use of IT services because of its complexities. Dr Jawali stressed upon the IT and healthcare industries going hand-in-hand as this will help equip the healthcare industry with much newer and upgraded technology, while it would also become a lucrative investment option for the IT sector
“IT should be made part of the medical curriculum for both medical and para-medical staff, coupled with user-friendly software. IT is subject to rapid change and usually the upgradation costs are quite high,” said Jawali.
He suggested, therefore, that in order that both industries benefit from the tremendous growth the healthcare industry has in the coming years, The IT industry offer affordable upgradation packages.
Making the healthcare-related software user-friendly would encourage the healthcare industry on the whole to go hi-tech.
He added that IT should be used for time management in the health sector. “Medical informatics should be available even on a mobile phone. Doctors should be able to virtually visit patients admitted to the hospital, as well as surgical sites.
“Monitoring of patients can be done through I-phone technology, while all patients can be issued health smartcards that will contain their entire health case history. Hence, doctors in any part of India will only need to enter a patient’s healthcard clip to learn about his health background,” Dr Jawali said.
Dr Jawali said that the government and the It industry should consider investing in healthcare for future profits.
Comments