Dr. Sushil Kumar Meher
CIO, Department of Computer Facility, All India Institute of - Medical Sciences (AIIMS)

Key priorities for 2021
Digital transformation and best IT strategy is the most important pillar to make efficient health service, research and education in AIIMS, New Delhi. Transforming healthcare through digitalisation is a passion in AIIMS, New Delhi for a long time. The highest priority has been for transformation to provide high level health research, promoting high standard of teaching / training and providing high quality of healthcare in the entire speciality. Digitisation in AIIMS is a never ending process and applied to yield quantum leaps in efficiency, cost-savings, patient safety and care quality.

Today the trend in digital health is integration of medical knowledge with IT applications / IT technologies, which improve the quality of medical care, right protocol for treatment and management of patients. Integration of mobile applications in digital health has given an opportunity for the specialist doctor to get the real time patient data and give the doctor consultation anywhere and anytime. Now a day’s digital health in GOI health organisation has revolutionised the business models in the area of health insurance (Ayushman Bharat GOI scheme), as well as those related to organisational forms of medical care, and have also changed the role/relationship between doctor and patient virtually which patients are getting an early warning about their disease.

The advantages of Electronic Health Record (EHR) in AIIMS which is already been implemented: 
●  Increased patient safety automatic reaction control (Drug – drug interaction and Allergic) with newly prescribed medications.
●  Reduction of treatment costs of patients - i. Avoiding duplicate examinations ii Past disease history and treatment of the patients iii. Management of hospital resources. 
●  Goal-oriented, medically appropriate treatment through the availability of laboratory findings, knowledge of previous illnesses, visual data from Radiology imaging.  
●  Rapid availability of second opinions from specialised doctors.

Key priorities for 2021
1.  IMPROVING PATIENT CARE & TRIAGE USING CHATBOTS/ VOICEBOTS Patients do have a tendency to book appointments at slightest threat or medical issue, which could sometimes be cured at home or self-treatment or turns out to be false-alarms. Artificial Intelligence here can assist to enable smoother flow by automating basic care, allowing doctors to deal more with complex and dire cases.

2.  CUSTOMER SERVICE BOTS & FRAUD DETECTION Utilizing artificial intelligence (NLP), interactive service bots can be built, allowing patients to ask questions regarding bill payment, appointments, or medication refills. Various AI tools can assist in providing positive results to patients while healthcare professionals have time to focus on priority tasks. Therefore, this digital healthcare solution achieves better outcomes with advanced treatment while engaging patients.

3.  HEALTH MONITORING Artificial Intelligence based technologies can keep track of a patient’s health. They can monitor the pulse, body temperature and other activities ensuring the individual is healthy. The system can notify the user regarding improvements. Also, this collected data and the patterns generated can then be used to timely diagnose any illness or give an indication to the doctor for any further tests to be done on the patients to further find out the issue with the patient’s health. Prescriptive analytics on patient data also enables accurate real-time case prioritization.

4.  IoMT (Internet of Medical Things) is the amalgamation of data from medical devices or equipment and medical software applications that connects to HIS wirelessly. All the real time data seamlessly will be stored in the central server. The intention is to combine people, data and processes through connected medical devices and mobile applications to help improve patient outcomes. In this case elderly care (Geriatric) and very critical patients will benefit from integration of technology through remote home monitoring (IOMT). IoMT will play a significant role in enabling doctors, for the first time, to monitor patients remotely and prevent episodes of care in a timely manner.

5.  Artificial intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) in healthcare is playing a big role in prediction of disease and can get early detection of infection in public. Which helps to analyse massive amounts of data around the human genome and drug molecules, and these new-age technologies can play an important role in the fight against COVID-19.

Adopting Work-From Anywhere
AIIMS business model is providing higher medical education and training to students, health workers within the AIIMS as well as outside AIIMS and health care also. During the COVID time most of the classes and examinations have been conducted online. A new program has been continuously organised “National Combined Grand Rounds on COVID – 19” on the open source Wordpress. Telehealth has been introduced to give remote consultation to the revisit patients. Different apps have been developed for monitoring patients remotely and giving / changing the prescription. Now AIIMS is taking an innovative new approach to address three key areas of impact: clinical, safety and security, and high-impact IT incidents.

Redesigning IT & Security strategy
Healthcare sector is seeing the highest number of ransomware attacks, hackers actively scan for known vulnerabilities to exploit and gain a foothold onto the network. Organized crime, and now in some cases, nation-state actors, have seen substantial earnings by taking healthcare networks hostage, predominantly from care providers and hospitals battling COVID-19 on the front lines. With each success and ransom paid, more ransomware attacks are guaranteed. In healthcare, there are downstream effects for everything that happens. Whatever happens with data eventually affects a human being.

There are steps we can and must take to prevent becoming a victim. With Ransomware, knowledge is power. Understanding why it is happening, how it is happening, and to whom is critical. Gaining insights into how you can detect intruders and knowing the methods they use to gain access is necessary if you are going to stop them before the harm is substantial. Ransomware attacks have warning signs, and attackers leave trails. Analysis of the anatomy and psychology of a ransomware attack and take a smarter, more adaptive approach to protect critical databases, files and more with a comprehensive data security platform. Phishing emails are another entry point, so refreshing employee security awareness can also support ransomware prevention efforts.

Blockchain technology:  All health data can be saved securely by means of this technology. When it comes to the storage of health data, having a database network means a patient can have their own password that they use to verify access to records at a range of hospitals and medical offices, thus maintaining accurate data that promotes health without the need for vulnerable personal records. Medical records should be stored on a distributed ledger or blockchain using tools. This is shared with the patient, healthcare provider, insurer, and the government. In this case, the AIIMS acts as the regulator for his own patients. Blockchain uses cryptographic proof to validate records on public-key cryptography to secure data. In this technology EMR of the patients will be more secured.