As a first step in the move to electronic medical record maintenance, the Jawaharlal Institute of Postgraduate Medical Education and Research on Wednesday launched the ‘Partners in Prevention Programme’ for the police department, whereby their medical records will be maintained online.
Each of the policemen who is screened at JIPMER will be given a ‘Meddrecords Online Card’, which has a unique 16-digit identification number and a barcode. When the patient visits the doctor, all their details are entered into an online database that can be accessed from anywhere in the world. Using a username and password given to them, the patient will then be able to update daily blood pressure, blood sugar level, family history and other details that can later be accessed by the doctor, Director of JIPMER T.S. Ravikumar told reporters on the sidelines of the launch.
This is just the first step in the move towards electronic records. JIPMER is working simultaneously with a number of private companies as well as the National Informatics Centre in order to develop some modules of the e-record maintenance. The idea is to make the whole programme open source so that patients will be able to access their records anywhere in the world without depending on any single company, he said.
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They are also looking to integrate the public health records with the ration card or the Aadhar card, which would help them from a public health standpoint. It would also help them to identify those who had completed their immunisation cycles and various screenings.
Although there are several limitations, both from the consumer and the provider side, they were working towards ironing out these details to provide a concrete system, Dr. Ravikumar said.
At the inauguration of the Partners in Prevention, 30 police officials received their Meddrecords online cards. The tests for the police officers would take place twice a week, with 60 personnel receiving their cards every week.
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For those who were perfectly healthy, they would receive wellness advice, those at risk for some disease would be referred to the appropriate clinics and those who had some diseases would be offered targeted treatments.
Chief Minister N. Rangasamy, Inspector General of Police R.S. Krishnia and Deputy Inspector Generals Atul Kattiyar and I.D. Shukla were present at the inauguration of the program.