Electronics Corporation of India Ltd (ECIL) and Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) – Quality Service by Cancer Hospitals

The Cancer Hospital Information Management System (CHIMS) is a fully indigenous, user friendly, modularised and integrated on-line application software developed to address the needs of medium to large sized Cancer Hospitals and Medical Research Institutions across the nation and helps National Tumour Registry to conduct analytical studies related to cancer trends in the country. CHIMS is an outcome of blended synergy of domain expertise from leading Oncologists from Tata Memorial Centre (a DAE unit) and technical knowhow from experienced IT professionals of ECIL

CHIMS aims at providing accessible and affordable cancer care to the common man prone to cancer and supports in reducing the mortality rates due to cancer. The replication of the solution among multiple hospitals provides a sharable common platform for information and data exchange in cancer care and research.

Challenges

• Long patient queues and waiting times.
• Delays in manual Appointments and scheduling.
• Doctors’ difficulty in examining various patient physical files.
• Inconsistencies and delays in manual billing and reconciliation of financial transactions.
• Manual generation of medical and MIS reports.

Solution

CHIMS focuses on unique features related to cancer diagnosis, treatment and cancer specific parameters, marking of treatment sites on patient image templates, archiving of patient images on Image server, retrieval of DICOM images from PACS server and integrating them with CHIMS solution through Health Level – 7 (HL7) protocol. CHIMS also provides Electronic Medical Record Information, which is a structured and chronologically ordered presentation of patients’ information to assist the doctors, clinicians to quickly navigate on-line through the patients’ medical history, diagnostic investigations, treatment plans and treatments given.

Established methods of cancer treatment are radiation therapy, chemotherapy and surgery. Teletherapy, a part of radiation therapy, is administered to the patients on various Telecobalt machines like Bhabhatron, Equinox, Theratron etc or on Linear Accelerator machines like Trilogy, Novalis Tx, Clinac 6EX etc. CHIMS supports these equipment related parameters through Medical Physics calculation and addresses the details of the Radiation Therapy treatment plan, dose, procedures used for treatment, treatment response, toxicity details, equipment transfers and treatment conclusion. Chemotherapy part of CHIMS deals with the protocol planning, drugs and cycle duration fixing, treatment details capturing, toxicity and side effects recording and response evaluation features.

Along with generic healthcare modules, CHIMS provides Comprehensive Management Information System, that provides registration trends, lead time for admission, bed occupancy rate, investigations/reports and surgery appointments alongwith readmission rates, mortality rates, expenditure and revenue trends.

Outcomes

• Effective patient crowd management and quick turnaround time.
• Optimal utilisation of resources and improved work culture.
• Enabling Doctors to serve patients efficiently through CHIMS.

CHIMS solution is implemented at Tata Memorial Hospital (TMH) and ACTREC, Mumbai. During 2014, 37,731 case files, 64,859 total Registrations, 26,224 admissions, 42,412 Surgical oncology cases, 24,794 Radiation Oncology cases and 90,974 Medical Oncology cases were registered at TMH and ACTREC through CHIMS. Apart from TMH, the same solution is replicated at Homi Bhabha Cancer Hospital and Research Institute, Visakhapatnam and Homi Bhabha Cancer Hospital, Sangruru. Nuclear Medicine software, a part of CHIMS is implemented at Radiation Medicine Centre, BARC for Thyroid Management.