PUNE: Maharashtra has become the ninth Indian state to launch the Integrated Health Information Platform (IHIP) for people across the state. The IHIP is a mobile application-enabled health information system and carries out the role of reporting disease outbreaks in near-real time. In the first phase of the implementation of the IHIP, the move will cover the rural areas.
A training programme, involving more than 10,000 health workers, medical officers, pharmacists and lab-technicians was organised followed by the launch of the IHIP on Monday, December 30, 2019. The professionals were imparted training in using the electronic module and in reporting diseases outbreaks using it.
Pratap Awate, state surveillance officer, said that due to IHIP, paper and software based disease data collection system has been transformed into cellphone or electronic device-enabled data collection system.
The mobile application will also provide the facility of geo-tagging reports of disease outbreaks, making it easy for analysts to study data. Apart from this, the IHIP also aims to bring all health programmes in the state under one digital roof. Earlier, different programmes had different software and applications.
The complete implementation of the IHIP in rural areas in Maharashtra is facing a number of challenges. One of the major challenges is the shortage of staff. A number of positions of data entry operators, medical officers and pharmacists, besides laboratory technicians are vacant in state-run hospitals in rural areas. Similar issues also exists in primary health centres, rural district and civil hospitals.
According to Awate, the initial task of the government is to simply register data of all patients along with the data of all medical institutions in the state and details of concerned medical officers.