Calcutta Medical Research Institute : CMRI - 20 Years Of Best Practices And Growing

One of the leading hospitals in the city of Kolkata, Calcutta Medical
Research Institute (CMRI) has a long history of implementing best practices in
the field of IT with a technological advantage over its competitors.

The hospital houses best-of-the-class instruments for diagnosis with a well
defined IT policy and has emerged as a state-of-the-art facility in terms of
healthcare management.

Part of the GP-CK Birla Group, the hospital was founded by Late BM Birla,
primarily to cater to the social needs of the city, as well as to set-up
pioneering projects like scientific research, education, health and social
welfare.

Set up in 1969, CMRI today is an ISO 9001:2000 certified institution boasting
of the most advanced multi-specialty and research centres in India. The hospital
has got more than 400 beds and has a tie-up with Cleveland Clinic Foundation to
provide international healthcare.

An institution of this stature indeed requires a well-defined and well-placed
IT process in place. The responsibility of the entire hospital framework, in
terms of datamanagement and dataflow is on the shoulders of the IT team with
Vishnu Gupta heading the department as the CIO of CMRI.

"The IT team has to build up the entire IT infrastructure as well as maintain
it with constant supervision. In all the departments like pathology, eye,
surgery and others, we have a well structured IT installation in place and are
implementing the latest technologies," said Vishnu Gupta.

Across the 13 floors of the hospital, the network is secured by a LAN
connection, sharing data across different platforms. Besides, with an intranet
network in place, the hospital is connected with its sister concern, BM Birla
Institute of Heart Research. CMRI has already procured 10 servers in the range
of blade, rack and desktops from IBM, Sun and HP to serve the 250 workstations
in the hospital. Zenith, LG and other vendors comprise the rest of the
purchases.

Across all the workstations and installations, the hospital has chosen
Windows as the OS platform, and the entire range of applications in the hospital
runs on the Windows fold. However, CMRI is in the implementation stage of
touch-screen monitors, the first in its vertical in the city.

"We have been running tests on touch-screen monitors in the eye department
with successful results and will be implementing them soon in other units. The
touch-screen monitors and kiosks make the process of patient diagnosis faster
and enhances staff productivity," Gupta said.

According to Gupta, while procuring, a CIO needs to primarily consider four
factors. Credibility is the most important factor while dealing with the vendor
or partner. Secondly, an optimum amount of financial stability of the vendor or
partner is needed so that the CIO is sure about the company's ability to cater
to the needs and demands. Thirdly, the partner must have a good support and
maintenance team to handle any issues and lastly, the partner must be placed in
a favourable geographical location to handle issues quickly and within a short
notice.

However, apart from its present infrastructure, the hospital is on its way to
implement SAP and is considering solution partners for the implementation.
Explaining the need to have a SAP solution, Gupta said, "With the huge amount of
workstations and data in place, we felt the need to streamline the process
across all departments to increase productivity."

CMRI will also be implanting virtualization side-by-side while implementing
SAP. "We had thought about these two solutions long back, but plans were put on
hold owing to the slowdown. Although minor procurements were done, owing to the
tight budget, we had to stop with the SAP plan. Now, with the IT budget in the
organization on a relaxed mode, we are ready to implement the same," Gupta
added.

CMRI's total procurement, till date has mostly been through the vendors
directly with 20 percent coming in from the channel SPs in Kolkata. Although the
percentage of procurement is seemingly low, the monetary value of these
purchases are quite high as CMRI has one of the highest budgets in Kolkata in
the healthcare vertical followed closely by West Bank Hospital.

"In terms of purchases, we do it directly through the vendors. However, in
this process, most of the time, the vendor instead of supplying directly routes
the products through their channel partners and we are comfortable with the
process. They (vendors) shortlist their (channel) partners and we select from
the list while taking the purchase decision," Gupta concluded.

Avishek Rakshit

avishekr@cybermedia.co.in