Organ allocation all set to become an automated process in T.N.

TRANSTAN testing the possibility of organ allocation through its app, Vidiyal

Published - April 18, 2022 08:29 pm IST - CHENNAI

After making patient registration a fully-automated process, the Transplant Authority of Tamil Nadu (TRANSTAN) is currently testing the possibility of organ allocation through its recently-developed application to make the entire process transparent.

In August 2021, TRANSTAN rolled out the automated web-cum-mobile app - Vidiyal - and initiated the registration of patients from start to finish on the platform. Aadhaar-based authentication, through mobile-based OTP and fingerprints, was rolled out for patients.

R. Kanthimathy, member-secretary of TRANSTAN, said this was the first-ever automated system for organ allocation in India and the first to use Aadhaar authentication to prevent multiple registrations.

“We have a test domain through which we tried out allocation for 75 cases in the last one month. Organ allocation will be simplified, as we have a structured allocation system in which all protocols have been incorporated. The app will automatically generate a waitlist, blood group- and seniority-wise, and put up the list for hospitals to accept/decline. If a hospital declines the organ, they will have to state the reason,” she said.

Why the app?

“Tamil Nadu has had over 1,482 donors and 8,850 transplant surgeries. The process of allocation has also evolved over a period of time,” she said.

From sending SMS and emails to hospitals, intimating them about the availability of donor organs, TRANSTAN moved to WhatsApp-based allocation in May 2018. “A WhatsApp group was created with all hospitals and TRANSTAN working as a team. Waitlists of patients had to be retrieved manually from the organ registry, and responses were standardised to shorten the decision-making process during the allocation. This helped improve transparency and standardise the allocation process. Yet, there were challenges,” she said.

They included a limited number of participants in a WhatsApp group, no interlink with the waitlist registry, leading to manual intervention, manual statistics and data collection and no provision for proper documentation.

“To overcome these challenges and to fine-tune the process to achieve two contradicting goals of transparency and data privacy, the app was launched for patient registry and organ allocation,” Ms. Kanthimathy said.

TRANSTAN re-designed the patient registry and registration to make it a fully-automated process by integrating Aadhar authentication, payment gateway (for private hospitals), SMS pathway, automated calls to hospitals and web and mobile notification. It ensured that the patient database was secure.

Ms. Kanthimathy said that now, patients were kept informed of registration, payment, active/inactive status and deletion. “After we moved to the app, the number of queries we received from patients regarding their status and ID numbers has reduced,” she said.

The app features a chat box to enable hospitals to raise queries, and shows a timer on the screen to limit the time-frame for decision-making to 45 minutes.

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