“Critical care has become resource intensive and also expensive,” Peter Laussen, chief, department of critical care, Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, said here on Sunday.
He delivered the Dr. M.S. Ramakrishnan Memorial Endowment Oration 2017 on ‘Risk Management and Forecasting in Critical Care’ organised by The CHILDS Trust Medical Research Foundation and Kanchi Kamakoti CHILDS Trust Hospital.
Dr. Laussen noted how predicting the course of a patient’s progress during the treatment is essential in critical care.
Forecasting is pivotal in intensive care to understand the patient’s response and predict the likelihood of treatment course.
“Twenty five years ago, the way critical care functioned was different; but now, though it has not changed too much, something interesting is happening. The digital collation of the patient data that is being done now, significantly helps in the treatment process and also gauge the development of critical care treatment itself,” he said, adding how personalised care in this field has gradually evolved for the better in the recent years.
A.C. Muthiah, chairman of The CHILDS Trust, said that M.S. Ramakrishnan was a doyen in the field of paediatrics and did a great service.
“At the time, he realised how important research is [in paediatrics] and laid emphasis on it,” he said.
K.N. Ganesh, director of Indian Institute of Science, Education and Research, Pune, said that the country has produced legends in science and research like physicist C.V. Raman, mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujam and physicist J.C. Bose. “Take J.C. Bose, for instance, he did pioneering work in wireless transmission. Interestingly, that work forms the basis of how our mobiles work,” he noted.
K. Mathangi Ramakrishnan, chairperson of CHILDS Trust Medical Research Foundation and Bala Ramachandran, medical director of Kanchi Kamakoti CHILDS Trust Hospital, were also present.
