Preface

The healthcare industry in India is witnessing a rapid change, attracting massive

investments, undergoing corporatization and competing for an increasingly
demanding customer base. There is a clear shift from a ‘supply oriented’ industry,
where the number of beds and specialties characterized the revenue and success of
the hospital. Increasingly, the hospitals are competing to win the ‘market demand’,
by competing for the patient mind-share and move focus on profits than on revenue
alone.

The Government, on the other hand, is encouraging the quality-consciousness of

the hospitals, by creating accreditation agencies, strengthening patient rights and
encouraging corporatization of hospitals. While the accreditation agencies increase
the patient awareness of the quality of the hospitals, it puts pressure on hospitals to
modernize and improve internal clinical and administrative processes. Increasingly,
the judiciary has ruled against the hospitals in several litigations of malpractice/
negligence/ poor patient care – thus increasing the cost of poor hospital processes
and documentations. Investors, on the other hand, are infusing huge capital in the
health industry and giving higher valuations to profitable operations.

Never before has the thrust on streamlined processes and profitable operations
been stronger for the Indian hospitals. These changing industry drivers have given
rise to a huge requiring for adopting professional IT infrastructure to build robust
processes and practices across the hospital. IT has proven to improve process
control in the organization, allow predictability and accountability in the operations.
More so, the impact of IT is most visible in the clinical workflow, which is currently
fraught with inefficiencies, due to paper based documentation, leading to repetitive,
error-prone and time consuming activities.

Increasingly, Indian hospitals are adopting IT to implement individual independent

processes, reduce inefficient paper work and improve the quality of reporting on
hospital metrics.

About Asclepius Consulting

In this context, Asclepius Consulting is a notable venture which supports the Indian
hospitals in implementing robust IT solutions which cover the entire hospital
workflow – including hospital administration, patient care, laboratory, pharmacy,
radiology and other associated ancillary services.

The company owns a suite of healthcare software product called Charak, which is
built specifically for the Indian market. The company is led by IIT/ IIM graduates who
were driving Healthcare IT projects worldwide with GE Healthcare for over 15 years.
The company makes Six Sigma quality healthcare IT products which are compliant
to HL7, DICOM, IHE standards and provide international quality products at a very
affordable price.

About Charak
The product includes in-depth administrative modules (HIS) - billing, inventory,
admission, discharge, pharmacy etc. built over extensive inputs from major
hospitals in India. The HIS modules constitute extensive configurability to support
the complexities of the Indian hospitals.

The software has an elaborate scheduling module to manage doctor appointments

as well multiple hospital resources like OTs, equipments, assets etc. The billing
modules support multiple price lists by types of doctors, patient categories,
insurance companies etc. The software incorporates a unique event based billing
framework, where the services are charged to patients at the point of care – thereby
minimizing lost bills. The material management modules have been extensively
tracks vendor interactions, manages inventory at the sub-stores level and supports
budgeting for multiple hospital departments.

Further, the company specializes in Clinical Information System (CIS) which support
the entire care process in the OPD/ IPD /Daycare /Emergency departments - history,
examinations, diagnosis, investigations, orders, OT notes, day procedures,
medications, ICU monitoring, discharge summary etc.
The software provides several clinically templates based on specific specialties –
cardiology, obstetrics, oncology, nephrology, medicine, pediatrics, eye etc. which
allow doctor to use pre-populated data for documentations, lab/ radiology/
pharmacy orders, discharge summaries, OT notes etc. The solution supports
hardware like digital pens and voice recorders to allow seamless data entry and
minimize the habit changes for doctors.

The software provides HL7 interfaces with bed side devices, lab devices and other
diagnostic devices to chart patient data electronically. The software supports
extensive clinical decision support, pathways and clinical protocols which
standardizes hospital processes and frees up the doctor's time.

This approach generates a robust Electronic Medical Record (EMR) which is

accessible on internet and mobile phones - thus allowing the doctors to access
patient information even when they are not in the office. The solution meets the
documentation needs for NABH accreditation and cashless insurance.

The software has a unique reporting tool – Advanced Interactive Reporting (AIR) –
which allow data analysis of a single report on multiple business dimensions. The
software supports clinical research on patient data on multiple diagnosis,
investigation and treatment parameters.

Overall, the software provides an unparallel range of features, built specifically for
the Indian healthcare market. The software provides international quality solution by
international team of doctors, consultants and IT professionals. By adopting a thin
client solution, the software achieves a significantly low cost of ownership for the
Indian hospitals.
Please contact us at contactus@asclepiusconsulting.com to learn more about our
offerings and understand different ways where we may help you.