Health Initiatives – Andhra Pradesh - for APPSC G1 Mains

 Andhra Pradesh State Health Reform Programme (APSHRP), which was launched in 2007 through DFID funding support, has brought about significant changes in terms of the functioning of the health sector in the State.

This covers areas such as human resource management, performance evaluation systems and handling existing physical resources better.

This model, which has helped streamline the functioning of the health care delivery in Andhra Pradesh is now being keenly considered for possible replication in other States.

The Governance and human resource management of health sector has been strengthened, institutional mechanisms for community participation and accountability has been inculcated into the system. Significantly, this has also resulted in strengthening the financial management systems.

The Health Medical and Family Welfare Department has successfully  harnessed the Information and communication technology with the help of National informatics centre to improve effectiveness and efficiency in achieving some of the objectives.

The ICT initiatives include the following -

 

1.       Disease Surveillance : A SMS based disease surveillance system has been introduced for the first time in the country. As a result the disease related information can reach the key functionaries in a few minutes. Which otherwise used to take several days and weeks to reach the decision makers. The AP became role model in the country with respect to disease surveillance.

 

2.       Water Quality Monitoring : A mobile technology based water quality testing and reporting system has been successfully started in GHMC area.  Soon the system is going to be replicated to entire state. This system is going to ensure safe drinking water to people in the state.

 

3.       International Travelers :  For the first time in the country, a 24X7 basis online vaccination scheduling system has been implemented successfully at IPM.  It is totally eliminated the long queues and immensely benefited the international travelers.

 

4.       Medical Bills Re-reimbursement:  A totally transparent medical bills processing system has been developed and implemented at DME successfully for the benefit of all the State Govt employees.  Employees can monitor the status of processing of their medical bills through this system.  Further improvements are in the pipeline to further reduce the processing time of medical bills.

 

5.       Human Resources Development programmes : Employees are key assets for the service oriented department such as Health. To strengthen the health services delivery hands, in-large scale knowledge and skill improvement programmes for the benefit of employees of HM & FW dept has been taken up.  To ensure the  effectiveness of these programmes, a state-wide monitoring  system has been developed and operationalized.

 

6.        Hospitals Management : To improve the effectiveness and efficiency of the processes in the Govt hospitals namely,  a total modern work flow improvement system named as ' e-Hospital' harnessing state-of-the-art Information and Communication Technology has been taken up and successfully being implemented at a few Govt hospitals in the State. (Fever Hospital, KGH, RIMS Kadapa, Srikakulam etc., The system has helped patients, doctors and other medical and paramedical staff in the hospitals.  This scheme is going to be replicated to all the Govt hospitals including PHCs by the Govt.

 

7.       University Question Papers Security : A totally fool proof system IT based system was introduced to avoid leakages of question papers of  medical courses at NTR University of Health Sciences. As a result, leakages were eliminated.

 

8.       Large-scale training programmes are being organised for the staff of PHCs in using the mobiles for reporting the diseases information and indenting the drugs and other consumables. This system is envisaged to ensure availability of right quantity of live saving drugs at all the Govt hospitals.

9.        State wide Rapid Alerting System: Health functionaries play vital role during disasters such.  A state wide messaging system has been developed linking all the key health functionaries in the state, so as to  ensure communication of SOS type of messages and to respond to such messages within seconds on real-time basis. This system was successfully piloted during the recent H1N1 pandemic in the state.

 

All the above successfully running applications were analysed designed developed by NIC, APSC, Hyderabad for HM & FW Department. Applications which were development but not currently being used due to lack of institutional support are not mentioned here.

 

10.   Bio-metric Attendance : To ensure presence of health service providers, on pilot basis, bio-metric based time and attendance monitoring system has been introduced at King Koti and Vanasthalipuram Hospitals in State.

 

11.   Mobile technology has been successfully used to share information about the availability of the hospital beds and ventilators besides timely reporting of the results  during the A- H1N1 pandemic, yielded results, as out of  6307 samples tested so far  1323 were positive, so rest of 80% of the patients were discharged immediately based on online and sms report of the results.

 

12.               Online and SMS based blood component wise availability status which  was  piloted  is being rolled out for entire state.

 

Apart from this under PPP model following services were initiated - 

 

13. 108 and 104 : AP is the first state in the country to make available  ambulance services  during health emergencies and health information over a single phone call.

 

14.   Rajiv Arogyasri : Health insurance services to the citizens of BPL families even at Corporate Hospitals, where entire workflow and process is is online and automated.

 

15.  Andhra Pradesh, HM & FW dept won  several national and international awards such as e-India , mbillionth etc., awards for these initiatives.