Pandemic fast-tracking digital for Aster DM Healthcare – ET HealthWorld

Aster DM Healthcare’s Group Chief Information Officer Veneeth Purushotaman believes that digital is bringing the retail experience to the healthcare sector and customers now want the services to be available across all channels. “Health in your Hands” is now a reality as the patients can initiate and avail the services from their mobile devices, regardless of their location. Patient experience is further enhanced, when in these times of pandemic, a patient can complete all the pre-hospital formalities before entering the hospital or clinic just in time to meet the doctor.

Aster DM Healthcare has its presence across 8 countries and service offerings starting with Primary Care to Quaternary Care, Pharmacies and Home Care. “Our technology landscape is complex, therefore we have a mosaic of solutions that cater to the verticals and geographical, regulatory requirements,” said Purushotaman.

Purushotamana points out that Aster DM Healthcare has a cloud-first approach for applications and infrastructure as it helps in scaling-up and being nimble. In the last couple of years they have invested in consolidating their backend processes of Human Resources, Supply Chain and Finance.

Pandemic accelerating the digital initiates

The pandemic has definitely acted as a catalyst for many organizations. It is no secret that Tele-consult or Video Consult is a technology that existed even before the pandemic but the lockdowns and restrictions held by the pandemic brought the solution into real adoption.

“The sudden outbreak of pandemic clearly stated the ‘What’s in it for me’ to the stakeholders and they welcomed telemedicine and tele consultations. Aster had two phases in its journey with telemedicine; first when the pandemic caught us all by surprise we reacted by putting together a solution in 24 to 48 hrs across our facilities and ensured our doctors were available for our patients. We had close to a 1000 tele consults in a day across the group. The second phase was a more organized and prepared one when we implemented teleconsult solutions in India and integrated with Teams in GCC to provide teleconsult services,” Purushotaman said.

Similarly, Remote monitoring solutions whether it is Remote-ICU or Remote monitoring at home using IOMT (Internet of Medical Things); pandemic created a surge in adopting remote ICU and remote monitoring at home and hospitals.

“The ICU beds are connected and integrated with the Electronic Medical Record (EMR) and the bedside devices that capture the vitals of the patient are too connected with the EMR. We’ve created a remote terminal which connects to this EMR and also links the Camera that helps the Clinician see the patient and also monitor the patient remotely,” he added.

The clinical advice and medication is then administered by the nurses and clinicians within the ICU. This Remote monitoring is further enhanced with IOT chips which can be patched on the body of the patients to capture vitals and this further improves the patient care.

As the Healthcare industry is in the midst of a huge transformation with change in the patient behavior and patients opting more for virtual or home service. This brings in a huge opportunity to care providers and health systems to improve the accessibility and affordability. “We have therefore created a separate Vertical in Digital Health with Mr Brandon Rowberry as the Digital CEO to bring all the digital services under a single umbrella to ensure we offer a seamless omnichannel experience for our patients across the facilities and geographies we operate,” Purushotaman said.

Aster DM healthcare started their digital transformation journey late in 2019 and has accelerated the deployment working with leading global technology partners and soon they are launching their digital platform in GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council – UAE, Oman, Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia) next month.