Smart Way To Be Healthy

Introduction: Hospitals in metros boast of world class infrastructure, world
class doctors, facilities etc. However the same cannot be said about hospitals
in small towns or cities. There is a dire need of basic amenities, man, power,
medical equipments so on and so forth. Bengaluru-based Yos Technologies has
forayed into providing hospital management solutions for tier-2 and 3 cities in
Karnataka.The company has already tied up with Mangala Hospital at Hassan,
Adarsha Hospital at Tumkur, and a tier-1 government hospital at Bellary to
provide its hospital management solutions and services. Further, Yos is also
looking at tying up with hospitals in other tier-2 and 3 cities in Karnataka
like Mysore, Mangalore, Udupi, Hubli, Shimoga and Belgaum.

Challenges: Lack of awareness amongst the people poses a big challenge
to the company. Vijaya Verma, Founder and CEO of Yos Technologies commenting on
the same said, "Hospitals, especially in tier-2 and 3 cities have been facing
challenges in adoption of information technology. Most solutions offered to them
needed large upfront investments as well as major changes in their overall
processes and retraining of their staff." Yos is creating solutions that are
simple to deploy and use. These solutions help the hospitals to improve
operational efficiencies, while giving them an opportunity to generate revenues
as well. One such solution is Smartcards with embedded chips which used to
contain patients personal information ,is now carrying critical clinical data.

Verma said, "It will benefit the end-user, the patient who now has access to
Smarcards and the associated benefits that were only available in bigger tier-1
cities till now." Yos has already tied up with more than 30 hospitals in
Bengaluru and now the company is looking at expanding to other tier-2 and 3
cities in Karnataka.

Sometimes basic health information like blood group, medications, health
problems. However most of them would not have this information with them all the
time. Incase of an emergency, it becomes difficult to contactany family members.

Solution: Yos had recently announced the release of the latest version
of its flagship product 'Yos Record Management System (Yos RMS)' — a unique
Smart Card based solution for managing hospital inpatient and outpatient
records. Yos RMS allows all the hospital records to be maintained online for
better space utilization, enables exchange of data across various locations of
the hospital network safely and efficiently and also helps in clinical analysis
of data for planning as well as for research. Its light weight architecture and
document oriented database keeps resource requirements to minimum while being
extremely scalable.

The Record Management System developed by Yos is a pay-as-you-grow solution
that is tuned to the existing processes of the hospitals, while being flexible
enough to cater to future changes. It can be offered as hosted or standalone
implementations to suit the level of capital expenditures of hospitals.

Usage: The card wil automatically send a notification to the emergency
contact listed in it. Based on the emergency, the person can take a call on the
medications or be a part of decision making. The company is making provisions to
provide hospitals with smartcard reader.By any chance if a hospital does not
possess one,then the information can be sent to customer care, who will take the
necessary steps.

Start up: Admitting that hospitals is not patient friendly Verma said,
"Most hospitals use HMS but the patients are left at large." Verma wanted to
address patients needs by equipping them with Smartcards which will carry all
their personal as well as clinical information without having to depend on the
hospitals a lot.Initially the company acquired customers by labs and pharmacies.
Yos also started developing value added applications like medicine
reminders,online printing of ECG ,BP and sugar readings etc.

Recent Deployment: Yos recently added 73,000 records of Bengaluru
police personnel. The online health records of cops makes hospitals manage their
health better.They also suitable treatment incase of emergencies.The smartcard
is almost the size of a credit card and a login ID with password.The records are
put online which can be accessed from anywhere.Sometime earlier Yos also
launched 'infertility care' and diabetes care packages.It would provide an
end-to-end solution where a centralised place would store details of doctor,
patient, treatment details, records etc.The health record can be updated
anywhere.

Revathi Raghavan

revathir@cybermedia.co.in