With patients afflicted with diabetes and hypertension forming a significant group among those availing treatment at the Divisional Railway Hospital in Ponmalai here, the hospital authorities have proposed to create a computerised database of such patients soon.
Catering exclusively to railway employees, their dependants and those retired from service, the hospital authorities have planned to engage the services of visiting specialist in this endeavour.
Medical specialists of the hospital were on the job of creating the database which is expected to be put in place by this month.
The database will contain complete details of every patient being treated for diabetes and hypertension at the hospital.
This would include medicines prescribed, dosage, patient’s health condition and other related parameters. The data could be accessed at the click of a mouse. The need for creating an exclusive database was felt as patients afflicted with diabetes and hypertension formed a significant group at the hospital, says a specialist.
On an average, the number of outpatients visiting the hospital is around 600 every day of which 15 to 20 per cent were afflicted with diabetes and hypertension, the specialist said.
The whole objective of creating the database is to enable patients understand the disease better and the consequence of treatment which in turn will help in better compliance and reduce the complication in the long run, says Dr. S. G. Madwesh, the hospital’s Chief Medical Superintendent.
The over 85-year-old secondary care hospital with 197 beds has 19 medical experts of different specialities in-house and engages visiting specialists from outside on a case-to-case basis.
To serve the needs of its patients better, the hospital had recently augmented its medical equipment inventory by procuring three advanced equipment.
An autorefracto keratometer, operating otological microscope and a continuous cardiac topography for foetus are the new equipment to be added to the long list of equipments available at the facility.
