Pan India implementation of HMIS over Indian Railways

Hospital Management Information System for Indian Railways

• Railway Board’s letter No. 2018/TransCell/Health/HMIS, dated: 26.10.2020

Indian Railways has approved the implementation of Hospital Management Information System (HMIS) over Indian Railways. This will bring complete hospital management in IR on single architecture.

In the above regard, the work of HMIS has been transferred to RailTel and an MOU has been signed between RailTel, CRIS and Ministry of Railways with regard to modalities for execution of the work.

• HMIS will bring complete hospital management in IR on single architecture.
• RailTel will be main executing agency for the HMIS project
• RailTel to use C-DAC’s software for HMIS project.
• The software will be integrated with UMID system
• The Medical Department will be the nodal department for implementation
• AGM will coordinate the initiative at Zonal level and
• ADRM/Admin to coordinate at the Divisional level.

Further, Ministry of Railways (Railway Board) had constituted a 3 Members Committee for Pan India implementation of HMIS over Indian Railways and work as a Project Monitoring and Management Unit for the project under AM (Transformation).

Approved Recommendations of the Committee

The committee has submitted its report and Board (Chairman & CEO and MF) in consultation with DG (Health) have approved the following:

RailTel to use C-DAC’s software for HMIS project

1. To fast track the implementation of HMIS over Indian Railways, it is better not to go for development of any new application. Accordingly, preference needs to be given to the application which is presently available with Govt./ reputed private agencies and is reliable and time tested. With small changes in the software (Customization), it may be made fit for Railway use.

2. Considering above, C-DAC- a leading software development agency under Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, Govt of India, have a long experience in HMIS software and have fully developed software with following features:
   • Available in Open Source Technology and is portable across a variety of platforms
   • Customized clinical data according to department and laboratory
   • Multi hospital feature to provide Cross consultation for patients among different health professionals within the State.
   • Interface with Medical Equipments, Barcode, Biometrics, Digital Tablets & integration with other software of Railways like IRPES, IPAS is easier with open source based software.
   • Beneficiary can carry their health record in mobile

Therefore, RailTel to use C-DAC’s software for the HMIS project. The software should cater rollout of HMIS on the entire IR in the present scope and further onboarding of hospitals and health units may be done and payment may be released according to the onboarding. The software will be integrated with UMID system.

3. Cloud is preferred option for deployment of HMIS software and C-DAC’s cloud/ Data Centre to be utilized for this purpose so that faster rollout of HMIS may be ensured along with optimized cost and better coordination with software and hardware agencies. The C-DAC’s Data Centre may be connected with RailNet on redundant paths, at the nearest point, if required.

The payment to C-DAC may be linked with on boarding of Hospitals and Health Units or on the compute power required.

4. RailTel to examine the reasonability of rates for the software and cloud/ Data centre hosting.

5. Pan-IR development of HMIS software and deployment will help in reduction of cost and faster roll out. As per C-DAC’s quotations, the cost of PAN India rollout will not be much high and also payment will be staggered due to link with the deployment. Therefore, in the scope of work, Pan-IR HMIS development and deployment should be considered. For the enhanced scope, estimate will be revised in due course. The revision of estimate will be a parallel exercise with the roll out of HMIS as recommended.

6. The present system being planned for IR is for bringing complete hospital management on single architecture to prevent pilferage and for making administration of hospital services seamless.

7. PMJAY system of referral may be integrated with HMIS of IR and the Software agency to do so, as and when PMJAY system is ready.

8. LAN work in hospitals and dispensaries and connecting to RailNet/Internet (other than in the present scope) will be carried out by Zonal Railways for faster roll out and as per requirements.

9. Provision of Hardware like computers, printers, bar code readers, etc shall be provided by the Zonal Railways (other than the present scope). Necessary minimum specifications will be circulated by RailTel in consultation with C-DAC.

10. Medical and diagnostic machines to be connected on this IT platform.

11. RailTel will proceed ahead to tie-up with C-DAC for HMIS software and cloud/data centre infrastructure and sign MOU with clear cut Service Level Agreements (SLAs) for faster and smooth roll out of HMIS on IR.

12. The Medical Department will be the nodal department for implementation and concerned CMS/ MD will be Nodal officers for the initiative.

13. The Committee will continue to work as a Project Monitoring and Management unit at Railway Board to oversee the implementation of HMIS over IR. Any clarifications required on the subject matter may be addressed to the undersigned.

Ministry of Railways (Railway Board) had constituted a Committee comprising ED/E&R/Tele, Railway Board as Convener and ED/F(X)-II, Railway Board & Director/IH, Railway Board as Members for Pan India implementation of HMIS over Indian Railways and work as a Project Monitoring and Management Unit for the project under AM (Transformation).

7. This issues with the concurrence of Associate Finance of Transformation Cell, Railway Board.

What is UMID ?

UMID is a smart health card system in Indian Railways.

It helps in providing Unique Identity to all medical beneficiaries individually through a unique number as a perpetual entity. This Unique Identity helps in identifying medical beneficiaries across all health units spanning all across Indian Railways.

UMID stands for Unique Medical Identity Card for Indian Railways.

• Know more about UMID

C-DAC : Hospital Management Information Systems (HMIS)

C-DAC has designed and developed a versatile Hospital Management Information System (HMIS) in various models like conventional stand-alone hospital version and SaaS (Software as a Service) over the cloud infrastructure.

The real time HMIS streamlines the treatment flow of patients and simultaneously empowers the hospital’s workforce to perform their duties effectively and efficiently. It is modelled on the unique combination of a ‘patient centric and medical staff centric’ paradigm, thus providing benefits to both the recipients and the providers of healthcare.

C-DAC has also developed a unique concept of state-wide implementation of HMIS across various government hospitals ranging from super specialty hospitals, medical college hospitals, district hospitals to area hospitals. C-DAC’s HMIS has been deployed in more than 40 hospitals across India.

C-DAC has developed various solutions in this area. These include

• e-Sushrut – a web based HMIS developed using open source technology and with compliance to various national and international standards. It can be easily integrated with other systems using HL7 messaging
• eSwasthya – a web based SaaS model HMIS software suite built on open source platform, that facilitates hospitals for delivering effective, patient-centric serviced more efficiently
• Medical Document Semantic Analyzer – an HL7 compatible tool for unlocking healthcare data from narrative reports
• Megh Sushrut – an ERP solution for health delivery in SaaS model
• ONCONET – Cancer care for rural masses
• Tejhas – an HMIS solution with special features for cancer care

Source: C-DAC

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