Technology adoption @ Cloudnine

N Balasubramanian, GM & Head IT-Applications & Support, Cloudnine Group of Hospitals 

Every year, 2.6 million babies die before turning one month old. One million of them take their first and last breaths on the day they are born. Another 2.6 million are stillborn. A vast majority of these deaths are preventable. More than 80 per cent of newborn deaths are the result of premature birth, complications during labour and delivery and infections such as sepsis, meningitis and pneumonia. This has to be addressed.        

BY WHOM & HOW?

Digital Transformation at Cloudnine is a continuous journey both on the commercial and clinical fronts. Fired by the visionary in its Founder n Chairman Dr Kishore and powered by the missionary in its Founder n MD Rohit, the execution is propelled by the CXO group led by Ravi Ganesh as CEO.

In pursuit of its vision to provide premium quality health care to women and children,  constantly excelling to surpass the higher than the highest standards set in maternal and neonatal care, Cloudniine embraces and adopts technology to the core, in all its operations, continuously,  extending best customer experience, most satisfying customer service and impeccable quality clinical care.

Some of the  Clinical – Digital areas where digital cutting edge technologies like IOT, Cloud and Mobility have been widely adopted include Fetal Monitoring, Neo Natal intensive care and Pediatrics’ vitals monitoring  with due integration with the HIS and updating the Customers’ Electronics Health Records. The concepts have been proved and these projects have been successfully piloted moving towards commercialization.

All the three projects have one common goal – Saving Life – at different critical stages, namely before delivery, during delivery and after delivery.  Cloudnine believes every Life is precious and it is its duty to save, protect and comfort each one at all costs.

1.    Fetal Monitoring/ Non-Stress Test - It involves continuous monitoring of the fetal (baby’s) health through a device attached to the abdomen of the woman, recordingthe heart rate of the baby in the mother’s womb and the uterine contraction of the mother, sending pro-active alerts on adverse conditions to the Nursing staff and Doctors for their timely intervention and decision that could save the Pregnancy and health of the mother, which might result in loss, otherwise. Harnessing the IOT, Cloud and Mobile technologies the monitoring could be done from the comforts of the Home / Room / Bed of the mother avoiding traffic and travel to the center and at the same time not restricting her normal movements too. The Doctor too is alerted as per need on his / her mobile who can also study the trend by accessing the records and arrive at a well-considered decision.

2.    Tele-NICU - Cloudnine centres are equipped with the state of the art NICUs with latest equipments and devices and best of the class expertise to extend care and save the low birth weight (lbw) babies and babies falling sick on delivery.  Thanks to these facilities, the neo-natal mortality and morbidity rates at Cloudnine are near-zero. Hospitals in tier 2 / tier 3 cities that lack well equipped NICUs and expertise of Neonatologisitis, are forced to move such babies to NICUs in neighbouring towns / cities and precious time is lost. With an objective to save such babies, Cloudnine is harnessing the state of theart technology in setting up Tele NICUs jointly with GE whereby sick and lbw babies at remote locations are continuously monitored by expert Neonatologists and Intensivists from a central location at a Cloudnine facility ensuring immediate expert care as per need. 

3.    Vitals Watch : Cloudnine has also successfully piloted a project to continuously monitor the temperature and other vital parameters invoking the trending technologies like IOT, Cloud, Mobility with due integrationwith the  HIS updating the Health records of the child. For post-discharge high risk babies, regular and continued clinical grade monitoring and recording of vitals like Temperature, Heart rate, Respiratory rate and saturation can be done by deploying tiny, baby friendly wireless sensors attached to the body and readings recorded over Cloud. This, when combined with the Patient App and Doctors App on Mobile devices developed by Cloudnine,  may help in early identification of sickness,  prompt referral, Parent-Pediatrician communication and continuous customer engagement. 

Cloudnine encourages, supports and facilitates proactively use of better than the best technologies known and available, thereby leading as a Trend Setter in Technology adoption too.