Hale and Hearty

Modernization and upgradation of technology in Calcutta Medical Research
Institute (CMRI), one of Kolkatas oldest private hospitals, started way back in
2004. The entire IT structure has been restored and aligned with the everyday
operational needs and business processes. This has enabled CMRI to increase its
overall efficiency and productivity, customer service and business output. The
effective IT system has also brought in transparency and process efficiency in
addition to cost-effectiveness resulting in a significant 20% y-o-y growth.

Improving Processes

Consolidating the infrastructure guaranteeing a higher uptime and
operational efficiency was the key business priority for CMRI which has a set-up
of around ten servers and over two hundred machines. The organization has a well
established network infrastructure complete with integrated switches and
routers. The entire hardware runs through .net ASP classic and VB .net
applications.

Being in the healthcare industry, CMRI operates through one core HIMS
application, eMedicare, which has been developed in-house with the help of
Birlasoft; and it takes care of the entire day-to-day business needs of CMRI.
The application caters to almost 70% of its medical operations including
functioning and controlling of all medical equipments that is aligned with the
IT infrastructure. The system has enabled automation of CMRIs key functioning
and business processes. The only part that is yet to be integrated with the
system is medical records which are taken care of by a separate application.

We have a separate annual budget plan for IT	Vishnu Gupta, CIO, CMRI

The existing infrastructure has recently been integrated with SMS gateway
through Project Hello, CMRI is bringing in improved efficiency, transparency and
accountability. This application is hosted on a separate database server. The
data generated through this application transforms as a lead for the marketing
team for tapping new business opportunities. The service also helps the hospital
to communicate promptly all the detailed updates about the patients through SMS,
thus improving accountability and response time of the medical team. The new
system hosted through cloud has also helped to drastically bring down the
telecommunications cost.

The organization has a strong digital surveillance system in place working
through hundreds of cameras installed in the premise. Attendance management
system and OT access management system have also been automated. Over the last
eighteen months, CMRI has also implemented CRM based on cloud and SAAS mode.
Email service is also hosted on the cloud platform.

Leveraging on Automation

The organization is currently working towards implementing Electronic
Medical Records (EMR) system that will help it to automate and integrate the
entire process and infrastructure along with the core HIMS. The project is
scheduled to be completed by March, 2011.

"We have a separate annual budget plan for IT that is calculated based on the
regular expenses needed to maintain the existing infrastructure and an estimate
of the new implementations and upgradation spends," informs Vishnu Gupta, CIO,
CMRI. "Automation is the need of the hour. Technology is nothing, but a business
enabler. We leave no stone unturned to utilize its benefits to the maximum," he
adds.

Piyali Guha

piyalig@cybermedia.co.in