Fortis Healthcare, along with GE Healthcare, is planning to bring intensive care units with the entire hospital chain under its electronic Intensive Care Unit (eICU) facility soon.
“We are looking to bring all the Fortis hospitals under the eICU. As an initial step, we would be making the facility available to 500 beds in about 20 hospitals across the country by 2014,” said Amit Varma, Director, Fortis healthcare.
At present, the eICU facility covers 81 ICU beds of Fortis, which includes 18 in Raipur, 17 in Dehradun, 28 in Amritsar and 18 in Agra. For the facility named CritiNext, GE Healthcare is providing equipments and software support, Fortis provides the expertise.
Meanwhile, a GE Healthcare spokesperson added that CritiNext is also in talks with hospitals outside the Fortis chain to take them under the eICU. “Except for minimal expenses in setting up audio visual equipments, this will not create a financial burden for local hospitals. In addition to this, an expert team from the main centre will be monitoring the patient 24x7, giving inputs to hospitals in regional areas,” Varma added.
The technology enables a remote hospital to provide advanced consultation, care and monitoring to their critically ill in-patients without having to physically transfer them to super-speciality hospitals.
Currently, Fortis has 75 hospitals and 12,000 beds in India.
It also has already has presence in the Asia pacific region with facilities in India, Australia, New Zeeland, Vietnam, Hong Kong, Singapore, Mauritius, Dubai and Sri Lanka.