The healthcare domain in its entirety consists of multiple terminologies, methods, and numerous records keeping systems. Over time these medical systems have become more complex and sophisticated. With the addition of medico-legal requirements it has become a necessity to ensure that systems communicate in a defined manner and are interoperable with each other. Such requirements can only be met with the implementation of globally established medical standards defined by International / National organizations and ratified by standardization entities.

India being a large country with a population of more than a billion people, effective reach of healthcare in a cost effective manner is of prime importance. It is extremely important that healthcare systems follow laid down procedures and standards for effective delivery. Medical Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEM) and Independent Software Vendors (ISV) are a critical part of the healthcare delivery chain. There are many systems implementing a gamut of technologies available from such manufacturers. It has been observed worldwide that when these systems become proprietary, data exchange and communication with them is a major problem thus pushing up cost of healthcare delivery. Recently, the National Taskforce on Telemedicine mooted by Union Ministry of Health & Family Welfare along with Union Ministry of Communication and IT has recommended a host of medical informatics and IT standards to be adopted by manufacturers and users in order to promote low-cost solutions, easy migration/exchange of data, and interoperability.

Looking at the challenges faced by the medical equipment and software industry and hospitals in implementing and adapting to medical informatics standards, the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) under the guidance of the Department of Information Technology (DIT), Ministry of Communication and Information Technology (MCIT) has worked towards defining, adopting, promoting, and providing implementations of international and national standards, tools, and applications in medical / health informatics.

Towards the same, on September 05, 2008 a Symposium on Medical Informatics Standards in Indian Context is being organized by C-DAC in association with the DIT at the Yashvantrao Chavan Academy of Development Administration (YASHADA) with the aim to promote the use and adoption of Medical Informatics Standards by bringing together academic, service, and industry sectors of healthcare domain. Eminent personalities from industry and medical domain will discuss need, efforts, issues, roadmap, and more on the medical informatics standards in medical applications / devices. The symposium will bring together the people from the medical / health informatics domain which will help address issues, exchange ideas, and promote usage of standards.

Shri S. Ramakrishnan, Former Director General, C-DAC will give the keynote address and Shri K. K. Ghosh, Director, Medical Electronics & Telemedicine, DIT will deliver the inaugural address at the symposium.

SGPGIMS, Dr. S. B. Bhattacharya, Vice President, Karishma Software Ltd, Shri. B. S. Bedi, Sr. Dir. (Rtd.), Medical Electronics & Telemedicine, DIT, Mr. Virupaksh Naganathan, IBM India, and Prof. Jayanta Mukhopadhyay, Computer Science & Engineering, IIT Kharagpur will deliver talks at the symposium.

Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEM), Independent Software Vendors (ISV), Software Vendors, Health Informatics Professional, Application Developers, Technology enthusiasts, Policy makers and students are expected to join the symposium. The symposium and event are free for all registered attendees. Registration for symposium can be done at C-DAC's website (www.cdac.in)

Shri S. Ramakrishnan and Shri K. K. Ghosh will also unveil C-DAC's Medical Informatics Standards Software Development Kit Suite. Currently, the Suite contains SDKs for DICOM and HL7 standards. The Public Beta Program for these SDKs will be launched at the occasion. Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM) by National Electrical Manufacturers Association (NEMA) and Health Level 7 (HL7) by Health Level 7 Organization and American National Standards Institute (ANSI) are internationally established standards for medical data format and exchange.

C-DAC's Medical Informatics Standard Software Development Kit will ensure that the incorporation of DICOM and HL7 in any application or device will be easy and compliant with the standards as well as interoperable with other implementations. These software libraries are indigenously developed to meet the requirements of user in cost-effective manner. This solution will encourage the industry towards adaptability of the standards in applications and devices in healthcare domain. Compliance to these standards will open up international markets for indigenous medical device and software manufacturers.

The feature set of C-DAC's SDK are most comprehensive coverage of standards. Moreover, it has some unique features that are over and above other such products; like low cost, designed/built as API set, available on both Java and .Net platforms, optimizations for low memory and storage profile, leverages platform's multi-core / multiprocessing capabilities. As it is an API and not an application, it can be used to build any application / exchange / gateway that may require standard compliance. The SDK is designed so as to help in Rapid Application Development enabling the user to quickly adapt and build customized applications. Availability of components for multiple platforms ensures that the user can develop and maintain applications on platforms of her/his choice.

The SDK will be a great help to Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEM) involved in the manufacturing of medical and pro-medical devices like CT, X-Ray, MRI, Ultrasound, ECG, Digital Microscopes, and Film Scanners, Independent Software Vendors (ISV) building applications used in medical and healthcare domains such as Electronic Health Record (EHR) Systems, Hospital Information Systems (HIS), Clinical Information System, Radiological Information Systems, PACS, Software Vendors that make applications or systems that require supporting medical informatics and IT standards. Health Informatics Professional studying or doing research in area of medical data capture, storage, transmission, visualization, etc. will also need this SDK in order to interact with medical systems.

For more details, please contact :

Dr. Pradeep Sinha (), Chief Coordinator - R&D, C-DAC

and/or

Gaur Sunder (), Team Coordinator - Medical Informatics, C-DAC