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6. Medical Informatics to be part of medical and paramedical curriculum
Medical education needs to take full advantage of the power of ICT. A wellstructured
health informatics curriculum needs to be made an integral part of medical
education at all levels. Basic ICT facilities, such as good quality access to Internet
and e-Journals, need to be made compulsory for all medical colleges in the country.
For capacity building, ICT tools should be effectively deployed to train the
large number of health workers. Short and medium term courses need to be
developed and made available on the net to address training needs of all
health workers in the field. It should be made affordable, accessible and
easily available for small players. There is a need to evolve common formats
for data reporting to facilitate IT enablement of medical manpower at all
levels. Education related portals should also be set up for training of
medical manpower.
7. Create an institutional framework for implementation. An autonomous
body with the Ministry of Health should be responsible for planning and
implementing the project in a time bound manner. This body should be
autonomous and a non- profit organization with representation from private,
public and voluntary sectors2. All stakeholders should be represented in this
body and it should have the resources to promote and implement the plan. It
should also have the authority to ensure the smooth functioning of the Indian
Health Information Network.
The objectives for this institutional body will be:
- To formulate an implementation plan
- To coordinate the participation of all stake holders
- To create linkages with e-governance, medical education network
- To ensure financial viability of the project
- To set up a comprehensive and interactive national health portal
- To suggest common national standards
- To protect confidentiality and security of data
- To facilitate the ownership, access and flow of data
- To maintain and upgrade the system in future
The next step in the development of Indian Health Information Network is to formalize
the institutional body with appropriate professional people with domain expertise,
adequate budget, time tables, and measurable milestones to implement these
recommendations. The body may consider conducting pilot programmes before scaling at
the national level.
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