Desperate measures are afoot at the Health Department to salvage e-Health, the ambitious Rs.96-crore World Bank-aided Central project, which had run into rough weather after the project management unit (PMU) raised serious concerns about the competency and quality of the software developed for its implementation.
Touted to be the first of its kind project in the country, e-Health is essentially meant to streamline public health-care delivery by creating a mammoth electronic medical records (EMR) repository of individuals. It envisaged a central data server holding the demographic database of the population, which will be linked to the HMIS (Health Management Information System) projects of all State-run hospitals in the State.
The State had awarded the software development contract to an IT major last year .
Ideally, the pilot project should have been rolled out in 11 hospitals in Thiruvananthapuram in March and after user interface studies and updation of the software, should have been extended to seven districts (first phase) by November.
Though the IT major delivered the software on June 30, the PMU has been unhappy about the product. The Centre for Development of Imaging Technology (C-DIT), the third party which was called in to evaluate the software, reportedly found the software wanting.
The chief consultant of the project, who had raised serious objections to the software, left the project, reportedly following differences with the high-power committee headed by the Health Secretary. The administration’s recent attempts to replace him with a former official of the National Informatics Centre is now threatening to kick up a storm, with many questioning the individual’s credentials to head e-Health.
