Health department to go digital

Even as basic health care facilities remain largely out of the reach of rural masses of West Bengal, the state ministers are eager to link it to IT sector.

Thus, the IT-savvy health minister of West Bengal, Surjya Kanta Mishra has lofty plans to link the two sectors, through Internet and tele-medicine.

The minister plans to digitize the working of the entire health department, for which a consultant had already been engaged.

The project includes preparing a waiting list of patients seeking admission in government hospitals, building common medical service centres in every village Panchayat, monitoring of government hospitals through a system linked to the Internet, and electronically -disseminating information on availability of doctors and beds in hospitals, among others.

Monitoring of patients' waiting list in government hospitals would bring transparency to the health sector, the minister thinks.

Speaking at a seminar on digital health care organized by Indian Chamber of Commerce (ICC) in Kolkata on Thursday, the minister said, effective use of geographic information system (GIS) helped the government to set right bird-culling targets during the recent outbreak of bird flu and monitor the situation.

"Through the GIS system, we monitored the bird-flu affected villages and got data on how many people got fever during the period and related facts. By the use of integrated disease surveillance system, we can monitor diseases like cholera and malaria. But we have to go a long way," he said.

Debesh Das, minister of information and technology, West Bengal, said "The health department is a huge department, and the study for digitalising it has already been started by an independent consultant. We hope to partially implement the project by the end of this year."

The IT department was planning to connect about 14 state departments with Information and Communications Technology (ICT), he informed.

He further said, "If we could connect the hospitals with websites, then the system of discharge and admission will be much easier. A change in mindset is required for the purpose."