Healthcare and all its Participants i.e. Doctors, Hospitals, Pharmacists, Pharmaceutical Company, Medical Device Manufacturing and Marketing companies have welcomed Information Technologies all over world.

Hospital Management Softwares are installed at every corporate hospital, most of the medium sized hospital and in substantial numbers of small hospitals. 

Likewise all Pharmaceutical companies, their C & F agents and Distributors are using some sort of ERPs, to manage their inventory and invoices, Retailers are catching up the train. Many of them are able to manage multiple stores with the help of ERPs.

Amongst Doctors EMRs are cathing up too but with albeit slower pace then expected.

"Expected" said so because it is more required than any other field. As it is a service sector, and records are supposed to be maintained for years and often recalled by doctors themselves to see patient progress or past history. More ever patients are more desirous to keep their health history stored with them. State governments world wide have framed laws or putting ethical burden on doctors shoulder to do so.

Advanced Software technologies is expected to transfrom the way the health industry is functioning and more value is being added to these softwares every coming day. 

To date these applications or softwares offer innumerable services with their innovative and wide features. The competent software can manage the entire patient record including address, gender, and age, drug sensitivity to various other records. It prints out prescriptions, patient records, billings, diagnostic reports and other certificates. It maintains accounting system also the stock of medicines.

Newer web or cloud based applications can even transfer patient records from one doctor to another for review and second opinion, can provide access to patient while their records are maintained on cloud. Doctors schedules and appointments can be managed and reminders are sent for pending visits, vaccines or providing warning and cautions in case of epidemics.

Medicine is more demanding now a days and providers need to get a grip on all day-to- day activities of their clinics & staff. They need to do this without losing their focus on delivering health care, which is why the doctors are turning their attention towards the use of EMR. Many doctors have expressed their concerned regarding losing eye contact and personnal touch with the patient during enconunter. There were also concerns of data security on web based applications. Now it is IT provider`s responsibility to address these isssues.

Hopefully in near future we will be seeing newer versions of these applications providing 360 degree satisfaction to all participants most importantly Doctors and Patients.

Neelesh Namdev

Sr. Software Engineer

3 Years experience in Healthcare IT