VIJAYAWADA: The State Medical and Health Department is planning to launch a fresh initiative to stop illegible handwriting of the doctors by transforming the medical prescription to e-prescriptions and making digitised. Initially, all the government district and area hospitals in the State would be transformed into computerised digital prescriptions.Despite having clear instructions from Medical Council of India (MCI) and Medical department that the doctor’s prescription should always be in clear writing with bold capital letters, none of the doctors are following the rule. The State government is planning to implement all digitalised prescriptions in district and area hospitals.
The initiative will create huge burden over procuring the infrastructure with large number of systems, printers and provision of networks and softwares. In recent times, Telangana tied up with few pharma companies and released medicines labelled in Telugu language. This initiative received a huge applause from the public.
In fact, the health department officials held a meeting with private doctors associations and Indian Medical Association over the implementation of e-prescriptions. The officials wanted the doctors to adopt technology and initiate the project, so as to frame the State going paperless and digital in Health industry.
However, the doctors and the hospital authorities are worried about the huge expenses to be paid for acquiring computers and computer peripherals. Also the pharmacies are equally opposing the initiative stating.
IMA State President Dr P Gangadhar said that the initiative might sound good but it doesn’t work out practically. “Health department officials have interacted with us in April. It requires lot of computers and the hospitals have to structurise the working procedure and need to recruit lot of additional staff,” Gangadhar said.Initially, the health department wanted it implemented in private hospitals, as government hospitals are not in a position to utilise e-prescriptions.