Kerala’s NextGen e-hospital, A-HiMS 2.0 Portal Earn Praise at National Ayush Workshop

KOTTAYAM:

Kerala’s innovative NextGen e-hospital and A-HiMS portal came in for praise today at a pioneering national workshop, with experts reaffirming Kerala’s supremacy in digitising the AYUSH sector.

While NextGen e-hospital is a one-stop solution that helps patients to connect with hospitals and doctors on a single digital platform, A-HiMS 2.0 (AYUSH Homeopathy Information Management System) has emerged as a comprehensive IT platform that effectively manages all functions of healthcare delivery and patient care in AYUSH facilities, speakers noted at the ‘IT solutions for the AYUSH sector’ that concluded today.

Kerala has made “giant leaps” in e-governance in the state’s Department of Indian Systems of Medicine (ISM), said Dr Manesh Kumar E, Nodal Officer (IT) and Chief Medical Officer at Kerala government’s Department of ISM.

At his presentation in the event at Kumarakom of the district Kottayam, the speaker pointed out that Scan & Share, the Self-OPD registration system, based on the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission (ABDM), “significantly reduced overcrowding and complaints at the counters”.

National Health Authority had selected 134 hospitals across the country as ABDM Model facilities, and among them 3 hospitals are from Kerala. They are District Ayurveda Hospital Varkala (Thiruvananthapuram district, Government Ayurveda Hospital Ayoor (Kollam district) and Government Unani Dispensary Mogral (Kasaragod). Ernakulam District had completed NextGen implementation in all 82 facilities.

ISM department has an extensive network that connects 818 dispensaries, 131 hospitals, 67 sub-centres and 18 tribal dispensaries across the state, he revealed in his presentation. “Going forward we need to aim for total digitisation of ISM facilities, full utilisation of all modules in every facility, promote ABHA-based OPD registration in facilities by utilising scan-and-share facilities,” said Dr Kumar. ABHA is Ayushman Bharat Health Account, shown as a unique 14-digit number that allows one to store and share health records securely across various healthcare providers.

The event, organized by the National AYUSH Mission (NAM) Kerala in association with the State’s AYUSH Department and the Union Ministry of AYUSH, facilitated structured discussions and peer learning towards developing a comprehensive digital framework for AYUSH.

The NextGen E-hospital is an ABDM-compliant HMiS solution implemented in ISM hospitals, designed for digital management of patients’ health records. Dr Dr Manesh Kumar pointed out. By streamlining clinical workflows and other hospital operations, the system adheres to the guidelines of Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission (ABDM), ensuring seamless data exchange and digital health record integration.

ABDM-compliant HMiS solutions enable healthcare facilities to create and manage ABHA-linked health records for patients, facilitating a more efficient as well as digitally enabled healthcare ecosystem.

Coming to the Homeopathy sector, a senior official pointed out the upgraded version of AHiMS 2.0 has helped in enhancing hospital management through e-governance in Kerala.

Giving further details, AhiMS Nodal officer and Medical Officer Dr Anil S.K. of Government Homeopathy Hospital in Kayamkulam said the Department of Homeopathy had 743 institutions in the government sector, 409 primary-health centres and more than 1,100 dispensaries. “All of them generate huge medical data. To deal with them, we have developed AHiMS, which focuses on the entire data collection of all the activities at our institutions,” he said.

The Kerala State Digital Mission has led to stronger focus on hospital management by integrating all the modules, the expert added.