‘We are focused on advancing our technology to suit Indian requirements via proof of concept level projects’
Hitachi has launched a solution which will help extract precisely designated information from EMR. Ichiro Iino, MD, Hitachi India talks about the features of this solution, its advantages in the Indian scenario and the company’s plans to market it in India, in conversation with Lakshmipriya Nair
Tell us about the technology you have developed to extract precisely designated information from electronic medical records (EMR). How does it work?
EMR is made up of medical attributes with set terms and concepts. The terms can be subject complaints, medical history of patient and family history, lab/ diagnostic studies, treatment options, allergies, etc.
We’ve developed medical attribute classifiers for specific disease or disorder which were evaluated over de-identified dataset in CLEF 2014 challenge.
How will the technology help in simplifying healthcare delivery and make it more efficient?
Let’s take an example, consider the ready availability of a patient’s record anytime-anywhere which is highly useful for doctors to make timely and effective treatment decisions. This is realised by having EMRs and a well-connected network.
Now, moving one step further, with huge amounts of data available for analysis from EMRs, we can come up with applications to support clinical decision and this technology helps to realise such applications.
India is in need of innovative yet cost-efficient healthcare solutions. How does the new technology rate on both these fronts?
India’s healthcare scenario is in constant need of identifying new best practices in a cost-effective way for all relevant stakeholders.
This technology will solve some of the important demands put forth by the medical community by combining human and machine intelligence.
What are your strategies to market it? Has any healthcare player already adopted it?
We would like to leverage our data analytics experience for both improvement and cost-reduction of healthcare practice. We benchmark our technology with regard to the state-of-the-art and come up with methods to improve further: CLEF 2014 participation and achievement is one such example, where we have recorded highest accuracy for clinical information extraction.
What is your way ahead for this technology? What are your future plans for it?
We would like to leverage information extraction technology to create data-center value added services targeting hospitals.
In the next couple of years, we are focused on advancing our technology to suit Indian requirements via proof of concept level projects before launching to large scale deployments of the service within 5-10 year time frame.
How lucrative is the healthcare IT space in India at present? How does Hitachi India plan to leverage the opportunities available?
About 70 per cent of healthcare expenditure (2013 estimates) is with the private sector. With highly skilled practitioners and the will to implement latest IT systems in order to improve quality of service and control cost of expenditure, healthcare providers are focusing on the advancing technology aspects of healthcare delivery.
Telemedicine, hospital management system (HMS), digital health resources, EMRs are some of the key front runners in this space and are pursued actively by the private sector.
Coupled with a rising income and ageing population, healthcare spending is set to rise and the healthcare industry as a whole is expected to reach $150 billion in the next four years. Hitachi expects to contribute to such developments.