Advanced medical equipement
The painful and anxious wait for the doctor to view an x-ray film and tell one about a fractured bone or study a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) result to locate an internal injury may well be over.Now, the doctor can view the images on his computer in his cabin even before the patient gets is off the scanning equipment.Images are now close to real time. Diagnostic equipment can be connected to a master server that transfers the images to the monitors as soon as the scanning is completed. In short, images move all over the premises rather than patients, doctors and their assistants having to run around for the investigation results. Sitting in his office, G. Kuppusamy Naidu Memorial Hospital’s Dean Ramkumar Raghupathy views images of scan results of various patients. All they have to do was to enter their name and with a mention of the date of the procedures done.The doctors’ name and the type of diseases are also mentioned. Apart from viewing an X-ray, MRI and CT (computed tomography) results of an investigation done just hardly minutes ago, he can also recall those done months ago on the screen.The archived images and the history of treatment help in determining what can be done for the current patients. Based on the similarity of cases, the system enables surgeons examine whether a procedure done on a patient earlier can be repeated on another. “I saw this system first in 2003 while on a visit at a hospital in Salt Lake City in the U.S.,” says Dr. Raghupathy. “I was at the Department of Paediatrics Surgery at the University of Utah when all the investigations of a doctor couple’s child who had a skiing accident were all available on the screen and a team of doctors was studying these,” he narrates.
“Back home, I discussed this with our hospital (GKNM Hospital) president D. Jayavarthanavelu and got the go-ahead for introducing such a system here,” he says. Now, a couple of other hospitals in the city are installing this system.Dr. Raghupathy points out: “While images in near real time for quick diagnosis and treatment are the immediate advantage, the spin off from the technology is the use of archived material in this Electronic Medical Record for research and also in medical publications.”
Patients need not carry huge X-ray or other scan results. They can have the images on a compact disc.Manager of Information Technology at the hospital Biju Velayuthan says in just a few seconds after an investigation, the images will be available on 320 computers in the hospital. These include those in 30 wards where doctors on rounds can view the images and take an on-the-spot decision for further treatment such as surgery. He says 13 diagnostic equipments and a document scanner (see infobox) are connected to the master server and images from these can be viewed at the click of the mouse anywhere in the hospital. Mr. Biju shows four monitors showing images of different investigations on one patient, as if these were just one full screen. This is particularly helpful in deciding surgeries for multiple injuries patients. As for archiving, the hospital uses the Picture Archiving Communication System (PACS) provided by a German company. It helps create a comprehensive database of both common and rare maladies and also various injuries and how they were treated.
