Value Add

IT Solutions for the 21st Century

The healthcare industry in India has been growing at a 15-20 per cent year on year. Some of the major factors contributing to this growth has been rapid rise in income levels in urban India, the entry of corporates in healthcare, the rapid spread of health insurance, supported by innovations in delivery and business models.

21st Century RIM

A solution is only as good as the the way users use it to solve industry's problems. The 21st Century Rapid Implementation Methodology or RIM is half the story of their success. RIM has enabled 21st Century clients to internalise 21st Century HIS and clinical solutions in 50-60 per cent lesser time taken by others and with only 30-40 per cent of the efforts.

21st Century RIM deploys doctors and medical technologist as consultants on site and not software personnel like other companies do, to help internalise clinical modules like LIS/ AIS/ EMR, while MHAs, MBAs and cost accountants handle PMS, HMS and MMS and accounting applications. An essential part of the RIM is the involvement of top management for policy decisions during the process of implementation through escalation and review mechanisms. The other very important aspect is to ‘train the trainers’ which helps the hospital to implement faster and also save on time and cost. RIM involves meticulous planning and documentation.

Besides the methodology itself, it is the quality of trained knowledge resources at different levels.

21st Century Health Innovation: Customerisation V/s Customisation

Innovations in 21st Century product architecture and design is what makes the difference to its usability and internalisation. The 21st Century HealthNET++ architecture is designed to empower three levels of users responsible for ensuring high quality patient-centric services. The first level is the operational management of hospitals. 21st Century ‘HMIS engine’ provides them tremendous flexibility to ‘customerise’ the PMS/HMS/ MMS application without having to depend on software company's technical people for ‘customisation’ thus reducing dependence, time and cost.

The second level is the level of clinicians and medical fraternity who are actually delivering treatment to their patients. They need help to serve better and faster. They are hard pressed and in short supply. They gratefully adopt 21st Century Clinical Solutions which is designed by clinicians. It has work flows alerts and alarms just the way they need and enable them to scale their performance.

The third level is top management and corporate IT as our web-based policy setting and monitoring module empowers them to set and monitor all hospitals in the chain based on clear cut policies, alerts and mechanisms which prevent hospitals from deviations.

In a short time of just 6-7 years, 21st Century Health has much to be proud of. It has a large base of 160+ Hospitals, 450+ Labs , 200+ Endoscopy & Laproscopy Centres and 25+ Teleradiology Centres using its solutions in India, Middle east and East Africa. Some of its hi profile and note-worthy projects in India are:
	21st Century's HospiTALNET is being implemented at India's renowned chain of cardiac care Hospitals managed by Dr Devi Shetty's Narayana Hrudayalaya Bangalore. It currently covers the 820 bedded Narayana Hrudayalaya at Bangalore and 300 bedded Rabindranath Tagore Cardiac Hospital at Kolkotta. It will be deployed in a huge chain as Narayana Hrudayalaya opens more hospitals /Health cities across India .
	21st Century LabNET++ is being rolled out at Piramal Diagnostics Wellspring Labs & collections centres. Currently, about 50+ labs are completely automated and monitored through 21st Century's web-based policy monitoring module at Piramal Corporate at Mumbai..
	India's first advanced OT Imaging Systems integrating three Endoscopy OTs ( non DICOM ) with central archiving and editing facilities have been implemented by 21st Century Imaging specialists at the the Wockardt Kidney Institute in Kolkotta.
	Dr Nageshwar Reddy's is an icon in the field of Gastroenterology. Asian Institute of Gastroenterology - Hyderabad is India's foremost institute for treatment and research in gastro-enterology disorders. It is one of the three institutes in the world to undertake advance research and is also credited with highest number of ERCP procedures in the world. 21st Century HIS provides support to management while our EMR is indispensable for clinical research.
	India's first state-level HealthNET is being implemented by 21st Century Health at Goa starting with 1000 bedded Goa Medical College Hospital. In Phase 2 this will be extended to district, urban and rural hospitals, PHCs all monitored by the Directorate of Health Services & Health Ministry through the Central Policy Monitoring Module.

Critical Clinical Applications

21st Century teams vision of HealthNET goes well beyond traditional HIS and focusses on critical clinical applications for labs, OTs, imaging diagnostics and ICUs. The secret of delivering high quality clinical applications is interfacing with hi-tech medical equipment and know how clinicians think and work.

Says Satish Kini, Chief Mentor, 21st Century Health, “21st Century's bio-med engineers have developed ready interfaces with most leading medical equipment like 200+ Path equipment, 75+ Imaging modalities like DRs, CTs, MRIs and devices like ECG, patient monitoring used to track patient's condition. This convergence of medical technology and IT results in dramatic increase in productivity, accuracy, and satisfaction of medical fraternity who matter.

It is 21st Century's stated policy that if any hospital management is satisfied with their existing or preferred HIS, they would be more than happy to interface 21st Century clinical solutions with their preferred HIS on one side and standard ERPs like Oracle and SAP on the other side.

For clinical applications to work and be used and appreciated by overworked and stressed out clinical experts in labs, diagnostics centres and OTs (pathologists, radiologists, cardiologists, oncologists, endoscopy surgeons, general surgeons), it is essential that they be seamlessly interfaced with the medical equipment used by them.

21st Century has also collaborated with other healthcare consulting and IT solutions companies with complementary solutions and services like Milliman India for care guidelines and treatment protocols, Healthsprint for health insurance portal, Intellvisions for kiosks, Q terminals and effective signage 21st Century Health: Rapid Growth and Prominent Case Studies

Being a small organisation with limited financial and infrastructural resources has not dampened Centurions from thinking of being world leaders in healthcare solutions.

They all draw inspiration and conviction from a quotable quote by Margaret Mead— ‘There is nothing impossible which a small group of committed people can achieve; infact that is the only way to achieve the impossible!’ Remarks Kini "I read this on a placard in Dr Devi's Shetty's chambers and was amazed at what he has achieved with this belief.”

21st Century Health: Affordable Business Models

21st Century Health's innovation is not limited to solution design and its internalisation. 21st Century Health cross-subsidises the Indian healthcare sector with its healthcare projects in cash rich Middle-East countries, thus providing world-class solutions to Indian healthcare sector at highly affordable prices. States Kini, “The healthcare industry is not like any other business. Every human being is a potential consumer of its services. Unfortunately, in countries like India, 80 per cent of the potential consumers cannot afford the services that they badly need.” Although medical sciences is continuously inventing amazing discoveries each day to alleviate human suffering , more often than not these solutions are available and affordable only to a fraction of the population in rich countries. It is a huge challenge to healthcare

planners and providers to make these services available and affordable to more and more people who need them and yet be economically viable and profitable. 21st Century management strongly believes in fortune at the bottom of the pyramid and is putting it into practice through transparent and low priced business models. SaysKini, "I hope that some day in the near future, small and charitable Hospitals in India will be able to use our world-class HMIS solutions by just having to pay low usage fee as low as Rs 5 per OPD patient and Rs 25 per Indoor patient and similar such low transaction charges for other clinical areas."