A Framework for a Medical Information System

This paper discusses the possibility of, and provides the conceptual schema for, a wide area network of hospital information systems in the Delhi metropolitan area. Based on an empirical investigation of the pressures on the health care system in the Delhi metropolitan area, we feel that given the existing resources, a well designed and coordinated information system will enable the health care system to respond better to mass health care needs by providing resource information sharing across hospitals, centralized ambulance information dissemination service, sharing of expertise, improved patient assignment to specialized treatment facilities, and disease and epidemic monitoring. As the magnitude of patient arrival increases the pressure will be on hospitals to not only increase their internal efficiency but also to implement enabling systems that will allow for a collective advantage to emerge. Technically, the proposed system is cheap, feasible, and sufficiently robust to withstand growing pains associated with any technological component of a new scheme.