The project, which aims to reduce the waiting period from an average of six hours to two, was envisaged to make AIIMS’s OPD more patient-friendly
New Delhi: To reduce the long queues outside its out-patient department (OPD), the central government-run All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) in Delhi on Friday announced the launch of an appointments system.
The project, executed by the government’s National Informatics Centre and software services firm Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS), aims to reduce the waiting period from an average of six hours to two.
The project was envisaged in 2014 to improve accountability and transparency at AIIMS’s OPD, making it more patient-friendly.
While the National Informatics Centre developed the integration software, TCS helped complete the system by developing processes for crowd management.
“We started with follow-up patients. Then, we got new patients and integrated the Aadhaar numbers of patients,” said Deepak Aggarwal, assistant professor, neurosurgery, and chairman of the AIIMS computerization unit. “We then set up a call centre.”
“It has indeed transformed the lives of patients. Many people do not like to come to AIIMS because they can’t get an appointment or there is waiting and then also they are not very sure if they will see a doctor at the end of it,” health secretary Bhanu Pratap Singh said.
“A hospital is not just faculty, but the systems that a hospital brings is equally important and this will make a huge improvement.”
“AIIMS needs to become a paperless hospital. When Prime Minister Narendra Modi talks about minimum government, maximum governance, it is not just for businesses. It means good governance for the common man, and the last person at the bottom of the pyramid,” energy minister Piyush Goyal said at the inauguration of the project on Friday.
“Any transformative change is slow, but I hope this will serve as a good model for other public institutions,” said Rita Sood, professor in the department of medicine at AIIMS.