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Fortis Healthcare, promoted by Ranbaxy Labs, runs super-specialty state-of-the-art hospitals across North India on a hub and spoke model-world-class hospitals with centers of excellence in key specialties (serving as hubs), supported by network hospitals (serving as spokes), linked by telemedicine.

All Fortis hospitals are connected by a strong IT backbone that allows doctors to access specialist consultants across the system and use the strengths of a large network to deliver on the promise of exceptional care. And all this has been made possible through the efforts of Sunil Kapoor, CIO, Fortis Heathcare, who has not only demonstrated excellent leadership in aligning IT initiatives to achieve business goals.He is a richly deserving victor of the Champion CIO prize in the Mid-sized Enterprise (below Rs 1,000 crore) category at the CIOL-Dataquest Enterprise Connect Awards.

The IT Platter
Kapoor has helped Fortis strategically deploy IT for all of its critical processes barring clinical data recording in operating theaters and procedure rooms and tracking for archival, analysis and future references. With critical processes such as single window for registrations, admissions, discharge, transfers (for out patients and in patients); online reporting and viewing of test reports for diagnostics; digital imaging for a near film-less environment; information push to doctors and field staff, the company has been able to bring to life the concept of telemedicine (through its integrated healthcare delivery system). It has also deployed IT in its supply chain to effectively improve purchase costs (through automated price index) and to lower inventory costs.

The company measures the value of IT through metrics that evaluate continuous reduction in discharge time (from an average 20 to 30 minutes to 10 to 11 minutes) and inventory valuation figures (dropped by nearly 50%, from Rs 19.9 crore as on Jan 31, 2003 to Rs 11.8 crore as on March 31, 2004). Similarly, it measures patient satisfaction by an index with several parameters, one of which is the refunds process, which used to cause both the patients and hospital concern. Downtime in this regard has been brought down from 60 minutes to 20 minutes by automating the entire process.

Pioneering achievement
The Mohali hospital was one of the first in the country to deploy a Hospital Information System (HIS). The HIS solution includes different modules like Patient Data Records (PDR), Financial Information Systems, integrated Hospital Information Systems (iHIS) and Picture Archiving and Communication Systems (PACS) amongst others that help in the smooth running of a modern hospital. By deploying IT to remote-monitor patient bedside monitors, the company made it possible for doctors to view critical patient data from anywhere by dialing into the patient monitoring system server. This enables the accurate and timely delivery of information to the concerned doctors-patients from small towns can access services from the comfort of their town, even as far as 200 km away from Mohali.

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