HP to set up 14 eHealth centres in India in next 2 yrs

US-based tech giant Hewlett-Packard today said it will set up 14 HP cloud-enabled eHealth centres in partnership with Narayana Health to deliver affordable healthcare services in India.
Narayana Health runs a group of hospitals across 16 cities in India and a hospital in the Caribbean at Grand Cayman, North America.
Powered by HP's cloud-enabled solution, eHealth centres are rapidly deployable facilities built to connect patients in remote areas to receive consultations and diagnoses from physicians and specialists, HP Senior VP and MD (APJ) Printing and Personal Systems Nick Lazaridis said here.
Housed in shipping containers or existing facilities, each eHealth centre is customised and fully equipped with cloud-integrated diagnostic equipment, workstations and video conferencing, he added.

These technologies enable collection, analysis and tracking of individual and community-wide data like disease patterns and risk factors as well as regional-health profile monitoring to facilitate real-time disease surveillance, Lazaridis said.
The first eHealth Centre was established in 2012 in Haryana. There are six eHealth centres operating in India.

These have collectively have recorded over 36,000 patient visits as of June 2014. The catchment area for existing centers represents about two million people.
The phased implementation programme will build on the successful pilot program Narayana Health and HP launched in Paryadanga in April 2014 to establish five eHealth Centres in Karnataka and West Bengal, he added.

"We plan to install up to 20 eHealth Centres over the next 18-24 months. The equipment and training will be provided by HP," Lazaridis said.
Narayana Health will create awareness and understanding about the programme locally through outreach camps, public awareness campaigns and healthcare education programmes.
Besides, HP and NH will launch three new health hub support centres to serve the eHealth centre network. These will provide a facility where staff can get support on technical and medical issues related to operations.
Narayana Health Group CEO and MD Ashutosh Raghuvanshi said partnering with HP allows it to leverage technologies like tele-medicine and cloud capabilities to accelerate the goal of reaching more people and delivering early detection and diagnosis to patients, while maintaining manageable costs.

HP India Country Manager Neelam Dhawan said HP cloud- enabled technology, which is central to eHealth Centres, is helping to change the dynamics of the healthcare system in India.