Hon’ble CM of Telangana Sri K. Chandrashekar Rao launches the state-of-the-art next generation healthcare system

Hyderabad, August, 2014: Apollo Hospitals announced the launch of ‘eACCESS’ – a new paradigm in the delivery of critical care services, on the occasion of the 26th Anniversary of Apollo Hospitals, Hyderabad on Wednesday at Shilpakala Vedika. This cutting edge technology was formally launched by the Hon’ble Chief Minister of Telangana, Sri K. Chandrasekhar Rao. Guest of Honour & Hon’ble Dy. Chief Minister & Health Minister, Telangana Dr. T. Rajaiah; Dr Prathap C. Reddy, Chairman, Apollo Hospitals Group; Ms Sangita Reddy, Jt. Managing Director, Apollo Hospitals Group; Dr Hari Prasad, CEO – Central Region, Apollo Hospitals Group; Consultant Doctors and staff were present on the occasion.

After formally launching the ‘eACCESS’, Sri K. Chandrasekhar Rao said Apollo has immense reputation not in India alone but across the globe, even patients I know off come to Apollo Hyderabad from palces like Delhi, despite Apollo existing in Delhi, such is Apollo Hyderabad’s reputation. Even in Karimanagar, Apollo Reach Hospital has been doing excellent work. Hyderabad is going to have ITIR which will attract more people to the city, even the recent survey has pegged Hyderabad’s population at 1.25 crores making it a bigger city than Bangalore or Chennai, therefore I was asking Dr. Prathap Reddy to scale up his services in the city by building more Apollo Hospitals, to meet the needs of the growing populace. Recently during my visit to Malaysia and Singapore, I promised to frame the world’s best industrial policy, Telangana has several other advantages like a 100 lakh acres land bank, corruption free administration etc. People there said if we can implement even 50% of the promises, the investors from all over the world will flock to Hyderabad. All this would need more hospitals in future, he said. The credit of popularising Hyderabad as the medical tourism hub also largely goes to Apollo Hospitals, it played a great role in this, he added.

Dr. T. Rajaiah said, Apollo’s moto of serving people has earned it global accolades. He said the populace in the state especially in agency areas is suffering from contamination and spread of viral diseases, due to lack of health awareness and negligence on the part of public servants and paramedic staff. The staff is focusing on treatment rather than prevention. Due to this 60 to 70% of the people resort to superstitious practices and visit the doctor as a last resort after all those have failed. Therefore the new Government in Telangana and the Hon’ble Chief Minister are introducing a new concept called ‘ Mana Vuru Mana Pranalika’ through which will we will create awareness amongst the public about programs of the Government and reach these Government schemes to the people. Through this we can ensure we can ensure people don’t fall victim to diseases. Here my appeal to Apollo, which constantly updates medical community on latest practices through Continous medical programs, to conduct health awareness programs for people in the villages. Apollo should the responsibility of devicing a program to educate people on disease prevention, he said.

According to Dr Prathap Reddy, with eACCESS, Apollo has leapfrogged the ICU care to next-generation delivery. The critical care parameters have significantly improved, including a reduction in the average length of stay, decreased patient mortality and reduced patient morbidity. He said Apollo has always been in the lead to bring within the reach of our people the latest technology available anywhere in the world. Because of the latest technology like 2G, 3G, ‘Geography has become history’, he said. Apollo Hospitals Hyderabad today has every single technology the world has. We will shortly bring the latest robotic spine surgery from Israel. Managing critical care patients in the ICUs requires high levels of dexterity 24×7 from the entire ICU team in a clock-like precision. Continuous monitoring and timely interventions by clinical specialists is of paramount importance. This situation becomes grave considering the severe shortage of intensivists. The solution is to innovate and enable the best of critical care to be available even in the areas where critical care specialists are hard to find, Dr Reddy said. Recently ‘Gallup’ recognised Apollo Hospitals as the ‘best place to work in healthcare’ anywhere in the world, he added. Our emphasis is on keeping people well, he said.

Ms Sangita Reddy said, when we at Apollo proclaimed our goal was to reach out to ‘Billion lives’ people wondered how it was possible with our existing hospital network. eAccess is precisely an example of this. Through technology we can multiply our reach many times, in the past it was through Telemedicine, Apollo reached out to remote areas. We will be scaling newer frontiers with the launch of ‘m-Health’ in the near future, she added.

The state of the art eACCESS initiative of Apollo Hospitals in collaboration with Philips leverages the capabilities of various technologies including two way audiovisual communication, equipment data interface and novel representation of clinical data in various formats along with the added functionality of trends and alarms to facilitate intensivists to provide proactive quality care to the patients remotely.

A highly trained critical care team housed at a Command centre can complement the physical activities that happen within an ICU and ensure that patients are monitored continuously on a 24X7 basis through eACCESS. Any deviations in the conditions of patients can be readily picked up by remote monitoring and actions can be initiated promptly, thereby pre-empting possible hazardous complications. Through the eACCESS command centre one Intensivist will be able to monitor 40-50 patients and help the care team onsite to take relevant actions in real-time to prevent complications. This technology has a current capacity of monitoring 500 beds and can be scaled up to 1000 or more beds depending on the need.

eACCESS solution enables the establishment of a “hub-and-spoke” model where the command center is the hub and the peripheral ICUs are the spokes. The central command center has multiple “monitoring stations”. Each monitoring station has a high end computer system connected to an array of high resolution computer monitors. Clinical data (coming in from patient monitors / ventilators/ infusion pumps connected to the patient) of patients admitted to the peripheral ICUs is displayed as a “dashboard view”, enabling continuous monitoring of vital data and lab values. The monitoring intensivists/nurse can also triage into the bedside electronic health record system to either view more details than can be seen on the summary screen, or, to place orders for medications and labs.

About Apollo Hospitals Group

In 1983, Dr Prathap C Reddy, the architect of Indian healthcare, launched the first corporate hospital in India, Apollo Hospitals Chennai. Over the years, Apollo Hospitals Group has grown to become one of Asia’s largest integrated healthcare organizations with over 8,500 beds across 54 hospitals, more than 1200 pharmacies and over 100 diagnostic clinics. The Group also offers medical business process outsourcing services, health insurance services and clinical research divisions with a focus on epidemiological studies, stem cell research and genetic research. To develop talent for the burgeoning need of superior healthcare delivery, Apollo Hospitals Group has 11 nursing and hospital management colleges. These achievements have earned Apollo Hospitals Group several accolades, including the Centre of Excellence from the Government of India and recognition from the Joint Commission International (seven of our hospitals are JCI accredited). In a rare honour, the Government of India issued a commemorative stamp in recognition of Apollo’s contribution, the first for a healthcare organization. Apollo Hospitals Chairman, Dr Prathap C Reddy, was conferred with the prestigious Padma Vibhushan, in 2010. Apollo Hospitals Group, for over 27 years, has continuously excelled and maintained leadership in medical innovation, world-class clinical services and cutting-edge technology. Our hospitals are consistently ranked amongst the best hospitals globally for advanced medical services and research.