Lady Hardinge Medical College launches QR-based OPD registry

Officials said that patients coming to the hospital’s OPD will be able to share their demographic and personal details with the hospital just by scanning the code.

(Representational Image)

NEW DELHI: To cut long queues and minimise errors, a pilot project to digitise the patient registration system is being undertaken at the centre-run Lady Hardinge Medical College (LHMC). The project, led by the National Health Authority, is to enable QR-based patient registration at the hospital’s new outpatient department (OPD).

Officials said that patients coming to the hospital’s OPD will be able to share their demographic and personal details with the hospital just by scanning the code. “This service allows patients to simply scan a QR code and share their demographic details like name, age, gender, address, and mobile number among other details. This helps to reduce the time taken at the OPD registration counter, provides accurate data and, most importantly, avoids the wait in the long queues. The service is planned to be extended to other health departments soon,” said a senior official at NHA.

According to the service manual, patients can use the service by scanning the hospital’s unique QR code through their mobile phone — in-built phone camera, scanner, ABHA App, Arogya Setu App, or any other ABDM-enabled application.

“Once the profile is shared, the hospital provides a token number (queue number). The token generated is sent as a notification to the patient’s selected app and is also displayed on the screens placed at the OPD registration counters for the ease of patients. As per number, the patient can go to the registration counter and directly collect their OPD slip for a doctor consultation,” it said.

NHA chief RS Sharma said the service has already benefited over 2,200 patients in the past 15 days and the central body plans to extend its use to other health facilities. “It helped over 2,200 patients avoid the hustle of long queues. Direct profile sharing has also helped achieve higher levels of accuracy in patient records. Our team is working with other health facilities and departments to extend this service and help more patients,” he said.