Foreword

Healthcare Reforms in India

The right steps

If national and global targets of healthcare are to be achieved, large-scale reforms are the right way forward.

Healthcare in India

Miles to go

India is the leading supplier of generics to the world and yet in India healthcare for all is a chimera. Research-oriented Indian pharmaceutical companies spend less than 10 per cent of their sales on research. Innovation plays a key role in mitigating unmet medical needs. Future success in the healthcare arena will increasingly depend on collaborations and partnerships between all stakeholders.

Indian Healthcare Reforms

A much needed prescription

The first major change in Indian healthcare system started way back in 1946 by the recommendation of 'Bhore Committee'. Since then it has been a journey of various swings in ups and downs. The challenges are enormous and remedies are limited. India, with huge population base, needs reforms in areas of technology, resource availability, public-private partnership as top priority, to redefine progression in healthcare system.

Healthcare Management

Quality of Healthcare

Value of accreditation

Accreditation is recognised as a framework to integrate a quality management system while reducing risk, and requires a systematic assessment of hospitals against explicit standards.

Advance Care Planning

A new intervention

Advance Care Planning is a healthcare intervention in which the patient plans in advance in making ones healthcare decisions for which we do not know the overall balance of benefit to harm and risk.

The Lean Way

Improving healthcare performance

Organisational change and sustained improvement can be achieved using the same principles of strong leadership and lean deployment that have transformed major producers worldwide.

Urgent Care

The shift in emphasis

The UK National Health Service has seen a shift in emphasis in managing urgent care, from preventing emergency admissions to better management of care outside hospital. Benchmark out of hours services and improving the management of urgent care in general practice are the two recent initiatives in this shift.

Primary Healthcare in India

An ideal approach

Primary healthcare in India needs to be revamped and is in urgent need of reforms.

Medical Sciences

Circulating Nucleic Acids in Plasma & Serum

A non-invasive approach

CNAPS offers a non-invasive approach to a wide range of clinical disorders that will allow the basic information necessary not only for use in predictive medicine but also for direct use in acute medicine.

Surgical Speciality

Surgery for Acute

Heart failure

As we consider the surgical approach to heart failure, it is helpful to distil physiological themes that support pharmacologic treatment such as reduction of after-load to the heart or increased force of contraction.

Diagnostics

Three-dimensional Transesophageal Echocardiography

Early experiences

Imaging, especially echocardiography, plays a key role in structural, congenital and valvular heart disease interventions; not only for the evaluation of the disease and selection of eligible patients, but also for guidance of the procedures and in follow-up examinations. Live 3D echocardiography has recently added new dimensions by providing new views which help to get a better idea of the 3D character of the defect.

Molecular Diagnostics and Personalised Medicine

Present and future

Rationally developed therapies used diligently in the healthcare marketplace can undoubtedly benefit society, and the role of good quality predictive and diagnostic molecular tests is unambiguously a great advance for pharmaceutical medicine.

Technology, Equipment & Devices

Healthcare IT Spending

Effects of a changing global economy

A prolonged or deeper economic slowdown will inevitably be met by further reductions in IT capital and operating budgets, so, even those health IT initiatives that have a demonstrated ROI could become difficult to fund. The IT services and solution providers have to prepare themselves and develop some quick strategies to respond to the changed client behaviour and market conditions in healthcare expected in 2009 and 2010.

Facilities & Operations Management

Technology and Patient Safety

Capturing the power of technology

While healthcare is beneficial in the aggregate, it may also result in harm. Information technology may be used in a variety of ways to improve the safety and efficiency of healthcare.

Information Technology

SOA for Healthcare

Promises and pitfalls

To realise the benefits of Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) adoption, including cost-efficiency, adaptability, leverage of legacy systems, and the business agility required to meet new healthcare needs, healthcare organisations must adopt a realistic strategy, establish effective SOA governance processes, perform contextual evaluations of technologies, and recognise that SOA requires a different mind-set.

Hospital of Tomorrow

Technology leads the way in Asia

Hospitals of the 21st century will have state-of-the-art communication capabilities which will not only speed us along the path to recovery, but also ensure that our personal health records will remain, as they should do.

Clinical Transformation

Future of health IT at Marshfield Clinic

With a 40+ year history of clinical computing, Marshfield Clinic is rethinking the role and function of Information Systems. New tools and approaches will reshape the way medicine is practiced setting the stage for Marshfield Clinic to be successful in the new, evolving world of healthcare in the US.

Evolving Healthcare Technology

Changing processes

As and when technology changes and new products come into the markets, a situation is created wherein newer types of services are to be brought into picture. This change also leads to newer business models that are to be implemented by the market players.