Wipro Healthcare Offers Hospital Information System in the “Pay Per Use” Mode

Offering the Software as a Service(SaaS)

Patients’ data in hospitals must be timely, accurate and reliable as it could make the difference between life and death. The benefits of Information Technology can effectively address the challenges faced by healthcare providers.

Wipro HealthCare IT (Wipro HCIT) is a dedicated Health Informatics Company and is part of Wipro Ltd ,which is the World’s first CMMi Level 5 cer

Patients’ data in hospitals must be timely, accurate and reliable as it could make the difference between life and death. The benefits of Information Technology can effectively address the challenges faced by healthcare providers.

Wipro HealthCare IT (Wipro HCIT) is a dedicated Health Informatics Company and is part of Wipro Ltd ,which is the World’s first CMMi Level 5 certified software services company and the first outside USA to receive the IEEE Software Process Award.Wipro HCIT has a talent pool of over one hundred professionals with healthcare domain, Information Technology and management expertise. There are more than 50 satisfied global healthcare customers who have successfully implemented the healthcare information systems in private and government hospitals, clinics, pharmacies and diagnostic centres.

Wipro has recently launched SaaS model called as “Pay per use” or the “Utility Computing Model” of Hospital Information System in India. Especially designed for medium and small sized hospitals and clinics who work on very low IT maturity and shy away from automation.

Software as a service (SaaS, typically pronounced ‘sass’) is a model of software deployment where an application is hosted as a service provided to customers across the Internet. By eliminating the need to install and run the application on the customer’s own computer, SaaS alleviates the customer’s burden of software maintenance, ongoing operation, and support. SaaS has the potential to transform the way informationtechnology (IT) departments relate to and even think about their role as providers of computing services to the rest of the enterprise.

Simply put, SaaS can be defined as “software deployed as a hosted service and accessed over the Internet.”

Today, SaaS applications are expected to take advantage of the benefits of centralisation through a single-instance, multi-tenant architecture, and to provide a feature-rich experience competitive with comparable on-premise applications.

Key characteristics…

The key characteristics of SaaS software, includes:

• network-based access to, and management of, commercially available software
• activities that are managed from central locations rather than at each customer’s site, enabling customers to access applications remotely via the web
• application delivery that typically is closer to a one-tomany model (single instance, multi-tenant architecture) than to a one-to-one model, including architecture, pricing, partnering, and management characteristics
• centralised feature updating, which obviates the need for downloadable patches and upgrades

SaaS applications are generally priced on a peruser basis, sometimes with a relatively small minimum number of users and often with additional fees for extra band width and storage.

Managing the Risks of Software Acquisition

In a small hospital or nursing home setup it may-not be viable to install, run and maintain an application and the hardware infrastructure by the hospital team. Not only does it require a substantial commitment of financial resources , it also requires space , manpower, power, air-conditioning etc. With this there is always the fear of the initiative not being successful and hence the risk of failure. Hence in a smaller setup the management is looking for a risk free software acquisition where the cost of sunk investment is low. SaaS is a perfect solution for this since it is on a monthly rental model with no upfront investment in either the software or hardware or AMC.

SaaS model of hospital information system doesn’t require the deployment of a large infrastructure at the hospital location, which eliminates or drastically reduces the upfront commitment of resources.

Managing IT Focus

With SaaS, the job of deploying the hospital information system and keeping it running from day to day—testing and installing patches, managing upgrades, monitoring performance, ensuring high availability, and so forth—is handled by the provider ie Wipro.

By transferring the responsibility for these ‘overhead’ activities to a third party, the hospital management can focus more on high-value activities that align with and support the business goals of the hospital.

Considerations for Embracing SaaS

However there are certain considerations when adopting the SaaS model. Having a strong internet connectivity is an essential as all transactions will happen over the internet. Also here the server and data is residing at a third party through it is essential that all data has to be secure and safe with the provider and for that the vendor has to sign all legal non disclosure agreements with the hospital. The datacenter has to follow all norms of physical and virtual security to ensure that the data is secure and non accessible by anybody other than the hospital itself. Thirdly SaaS model proposes standardization of solution for all hospitals. Hence the software is fairly standard across all hospitals who use the hospital information system and individualization or customization of processes and workflows is not encouraged in this model.

What is WIPRO offering in SaaS

A secured datacenter which will host and run your software

• C omplete maintenance and running of the software on Wipro’s infrastructure
• C ustomer access the software over a remote broadband online real-time 24x7
• Wipro experts will train clients people in using the software. This will be done onsite.
• Maintenance of hardware, backups, security, bug fixing, database maintenance and application maintenance is Wipro’s responsibility
• There is no capital expenditure from Customers side, apart from a monthly fee based on usage.

The advantages of offering SaaS to the customers are:

1. No upfront investment in hardware or software
2. Only monthly rental fee plus one time setup and training fee
3. No investment in IT staff and manpower. No headache of retaining them and looking for replacement once they leave
4. No fear of virus or any other form of security attack
5. No challenges of server downtime or breakdowns
6. No worries on data backups
7. No space cost for setting up a server room
8. Monthly recurring cost of air-conditioning the server room.

The Product–Modules offered are

The modules and functionality are as foll.

Front Office

• Registration
• Patient search and information
• Doctors information
• Package and tariff information
• Appointment scheduling OP Billing

OP Billing

• OPD Consultation billing
• Pathology/Laboratory billing
• Radiology and other services billing Admission,Discharge and IP Billing

Admission,Discharge and IP Billing

• IP admissions
• Bed availability information
• Locate patient- bedwise- wardwise
• Collection of advances
• IP bill on discharge
• Discharge summary
• Cancel discharge Consumption Module

Consumption Module

• Service consumption by patients during inpatient stay
• OT and all procedures tracking
• Equipment utilisation
• Medicines
• Automatic updation of bill

Laboratory and Pathology and Radiology

• Billing
• Result printing
• Result dispatch tracking

Contract Management and TPAs

• Package deal designer
• TPA data management
• Insurance claim and handling TPA patients
• Tracking payables from TPAs
• Outstandings

Reports and MIS

• Analysis on new patient registrations
• Collection summary daily, department wise, doctor wise
• Profitability of each department
• Outstanding position and ageing analysis
• Admissions analysis
• Clinical data analysis

Wipro aims to provide software solutions that are well thought-out, heavily tested and reasonably priced and, ensures reliability and consistency in the performace of the hospital information system by furnishing it with a comfortable and user-friendly interface, elaborate documentation, and technical support.

Bottom Line…
You concentrate on running the hospital efficiently

Wipro will be your partner and take care of your IT and automation needs.

--Issue 18--