AIS mulls national roll out of hospital records project
Published:Thursday | June 16, 2016 | 12:00 AMTameka Gordon
Tech company Advanced Integrated Systems (AIS) is hoping to tap government and private sector clientele for its new electronic hospital management system, which it wants to roll out nationally.
The National Patient Information System (NPIS) will first be tested at the University Hospital of the West Indies.
AIS has made its pitch to the Government and is now awaiting feedback on whether the plan will be considered for the island's 25 hospitals and 300 clinics, said Chairman and CEO Doug Halsall.
He said an added spin-off of NPIS is that patients will own their medical information, contrary to what now obtains where patients records remain the property of medical facilities.
AIS already provides insurance and health-claims processing for some 3,900 medical facilities, two large insurance companies and the National Health Fund (NFH), handling some 130,000 claims per day. But its pitch to the private sector is NPIS would add "a sort of in-house system that will complement" the current slate of services AIS now provides, the CEO said.
"That will involve electronic prescriptions, which each doctor will be able to do, with pharmacies using our systems being able to receive and process these prescriptions and then, if needs be, these prescriptions could be paid for by mobile money," Halsall added.
The waiting time in doctors' offices could also be cut with the technology-driven system, he suggested.
"We also want to introduce electronic doctors' appointments. This way, a potential patient can look up a doctor (and) his speciality, book an appointment, and the system will dynamically inform that patient of any delays in the schedule so they don't have to go to the doctor and wait for two to four hours," he said.
ELECTRONIC REFERRALS
The system also allows for electronic referrals by doctors.
If given the green light, AIS would be ready to roll out NPIS in "six to nine months", Halsall said.
The system being developed for the university hospital should be ready by December. AIS and its India-based technology partner, Suvarna, are overhauling the hospital's record keeping and management system under a US$1-million investment.
"Right now, we are doing the gap analysis to see what they need and how their business rules really work. We are sitting down with department heads to ask them how they would like it work, get sign-off on that, and then configure the system," said Halsall.
He said the modules such as the doctor's desk, registration and digital records will be ready by year end.
The company has also taken on another technology partner, Graylogic, also from India, to push its e-commerce line on the heels of its mobile-money ready services.
Graylogic will help with the build out of the company's platform to offer "Amazon-like" online transactions, aimed at the local and regional markets, among other projects, Halsall said.
Graylogic directors Sri Bikkumania and Bhanu Prakash Varla were in Jamaica recently to finalise the "joint venture, profit-sharing partnership" with AIS.