Wednesday, October 6, 2010

Walk for Cancer Patients

If you or someone close to you is affected by cancer, you will know the pain and distress caused by the disease. But are you among those who also know that it is possible to reduce the pain, restore dignity and improve quality of life, in whatever stage the cancer may be, through palliative care?

Thousands of people like you in 70 countries across the globe will celebrate World Palliative Care Day, October 9, 2010. Like you, they are keen to “share the care” by learning or telling others about palliative care. As you may know, we have the CIPLA Palliative Care and Training Care in Pune, which has already cared for more than 6700 cancer patients and their families. Every year on the occasion of World Palliative Care Day, Cipla Centre organizes various awareness programs.

This year, we need your support to make this campaign really work.
Please join us for a “Walk for Palliative Care” on October 9, starting from Shivajinagar railway station at 7 a.m. and ending at Shaniwarwada around 9 a.m. The few steps you take with hundreds of others for the cause of palliative care will help us quickly spread the message to many that there is no need to suffer pain, when there is palliative care.

Please write to me on srivasaa2000@yahoo.com for confirmation or call Fatima Lilani on 9890883163 / Madhura on 9423009557 for more information.

Abhishek

Saturday, January 2, 2010

I will not loose my cool: New Year Resolutions

a) If somebody zooms past and overtakes from the left even if my left turn indicator is on for the last 100 meters and I am about to turn left. On top of that, he turns back and stares at me as if I made a mistake.

b) If somebody calls me and asks me "Who is speaking?"

c) If somebody sneezes near me without covering his nose and mouth, may be he does not watch television these days?

d) If the music system suddenly roars at full blast without any notice in my neighborhood.

e) If People walk across even when the green lights are on.

f) If somebody honks incessantly even though you have slowed down for somebody crossing the road

g) If people do not respond to calls or SMSs within a reasonable time frame

Cheers

Wednesday, December 23, 2009

Challenges: Hospital Management System launch in India


We have been in the market for the last few weeks selling our product, MediOps. It is a Hospital Management system for small and medium sized hospitals. Everybody knows that this is a large addressable market space and is expected to grow many folds in the coming years. The IT adoption in these units is abysmal. Looking at these factors, it seems that selling such a product should be a cake walk, but that is not so. In this post, I thought to share the challenges we are encountering and over the next few months, I would share our strategies and the output of these strategies.

Makin Economic Sense of IT: The basic problem with the healthcare industry is the prevalent culture of the healthcare industry. Other than the large multi-specialty hospitals, most of the other healthcare providers don’t make business decisions based on productivity or process improvement, which dominates other industries. Instead, they make decisions based on how much money do they have to spend and what will it do for the providers personally (and immediately). The related problem is serious shortage of trained staff who can handle even a basic software system as these providers are not willing to take the cost of such staffs.

Lack of Govt. Regulations: I personally investigated the patient case history and patient registration data of multiple units and found that there is a strong need to standardize the medical records of patients. Every unit is trying to follow their unique way of recording patient related data without caring about the problems it has created for the patients. It is a patient’s responsibility to maintain their own records. If he/she does not maintain it, the other doctors/hospitals will treat the patient without having a proper case history. Most of the developed countries have achieved more 90% standardization in this. Even in the US, The HITECH Act, part of the 2009 economic stimulus package (ARRA) passed by the US Congress, aims at inducing more physicians to adopt EHR. Title IV of the act promises incentive payments to those who adopt and use "certified EHRs" and, eventually, reducing Medicare payments to those who do not use an EHR. Funding for EHR incentives is also added to the Medicaid system. Government of India must also enforce such an act in order to encourage every provider to adopt an EHR.

Tuesday, September 1, 2009

Global NIT meet in December 2009


We are planning to organize a Global NIT meet in December 2009 in Mumbai. An effort is on to make this dream possible. We met on 30th August 2009 and have planned to meet regularly. Please come and join us by joining the group at http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=111670094437.

Saturday, August 15, 2009

H1N1: The story of overreaction

The day since H1N1 has entered Indian shores, it is been the top news/breaking news on almost all the channels. Within 3 days of it claiming the first victim, all the schools in Pune and Mumbai were closed or decided to be closed. The multiplexes were closed. People were seen walking on the streets with masks. There has been numerous views on whether we should have closed the schools or closed the multiplexes etc etc. I thought to put my two penny views as well:

a) In the initial stages of the outbreak , the information dissemination is very low. People are not aware of the precautions to be taken. Schools are one of the places where kids interact and there was every chance that it could have spread pretty fast without the lack of proper knowledge. As of now, even though there is an overflow of info, most of the parents are aware of the precautions and problems, will be careful and hence the chances of it spreading uncontrolled (at least in schools) are very low.

b) We always fear the unknown and this was an unknown virus. That's the reason there was so much of panic the moment deaths were reported. Of course media played its role in over reporting but I am sure it forced everybody to be more careful. You will see that in coming days the deaths will reduce dramatically even though the number of people affected will keep on rising.

c) Entry of private sector hospitals into treating H1N1 was very important as we all know government health care infrastructure is not sufficient. Initial few days were really difficult owing to very few test and treatment centres.India is a populous country and we need many hospitals and many touch points to handle patients of suspected flu. The over reaction has helped government promptly asking Pvt Hospitals to be ready for this. This is an extremely good sign.

So even though every body over reacted (Government, Hospitals, People) but in the melee, things are looking much better now. We are in better condition to fight H1N1.

Cheers

Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Handling H1N1: Corporate Dilemma

With the rapid spread of H1N1 Flu in India, it will be a challenge for Corporates to keep a balance between continuing serving customers and keeping workforce healthy. What is the best way to handle it? In India, there are no guidelines issued by the Federal government and hence every institution is taking a call in their own way. Should the government issue a guideline? That is not so simple, experience of handling H1N1 outside India has been a mixed bag. Every country handled it in a different manner. Probably Delhi Chief Minister chose the most politically correct response- It is upto individual institution (in this case schools) to decide. All such public places were closed in Pune couple of days back while it is closed in Mumbai from tomorrow. Whether these decisions are right, only time will tell.

So what if your company operates out of Pune, which is the epicenter of the flu? You have to make sure that your workforce does not get impacted at all. We took this call yesterday night and from today, We have allowed our employees to work from Home so that we can serve our customers without interruption and also prevent people from getting affected. The second important aspect is the access to latest info on the disease as the Government is taking a lot of steps on daily basis. We have decided to send mails to everyone on latest advisory and updates every day. DO let me know if something else can also be done?


Cheers

Friday, August 7, 2009

Global NIT meet in Dec 2009

Fellow NITians,

NIT has produced talented engineers who are spread across the world.It is high time that we get together and channelize our combined strength to nation building as well as giving more prominence to NIT brand. We need to be together at one forum. We have started our effort to do so in Mumbai. Please come and join us at Facebook group:

Facebook Global NIT Forum

Cheers
Abhishek