The healthcare system in India has always been criticised for its below-average infrastructure and poor reach in the smaller cities and the hinterland. Often, it has been observed that people living in Tier 3 cities or rural parts of the country have to travel for hours to Tier 2 or Tier 1 cities before they can access quality healthcare.

At the same time, a large section of the Indian population still relies on government healthcare facilities for emergency situations. However, this puts undue pressure on the entire government healthcare system with thousands of people jostling to get access to doctors and beds. 

Scenes of people sleeping outside the hospitals and overcrowded OPDs are what comes to one’s mind when one thinks of government hospitals in India. This already stressed infrastructure was faced with an elephantine challenge when the COVID-19 pandemic spread across the country.

During the second wave, visuals of people desperately trying to get intensive care support but in vain became a usual occurrence from hospitals even in megacities such as Delhi, Mumbai and Lucknow. This led to the government making various announcements and taking new initiatives to equip government hospitals with appropriate facilities. 

Making India’s healthcare system self-reliant is going to be a long and challenging task. Within that, the bigger challenge is to ensure that intensive care facilities can reach even the remotest parts of the country where hospitals do not have the necessary infrastructure and trained doctors to deal with emergency cases. It is important because getting immediate access to intensive care facilities means the chances of survival of any patient increase substantially. 

Therefore, the technology-driven Smart Intensive Care Units (ICU) are a much-needed step in the right direction for the country. The premise of such an ICU is that redundant tasks need to be removed and monotonous work needs to be offloaded from strained care providers. This then allows them to focus on the important task of patient care optimising their impact and efficiency. 

A Smart-ICU system often has multiple assistive tools and collaborative frameworks to reduce work burden. A major journal published a three-part series on the future of ICUs and how older iterations of telemedicine connect ICUs need to move towards a Smart-ICU concept.    

Smart-ICU platforms allows highly trained doctors and nurses to connect to hospitals that don't have access to ICU specialists 24 hours a day, seven days a week. And also digitises and analyses patient data, providing clinical decision support to both bedside teams and remote doctors. This then allows evidence-based treatment for ICU patients which improves outcomes ultimately saving lives.  

This unique mechanism of integrating technology into the existing hospital infrastructure is now converting traditional ICUs into a highly efficient system that is equipped to handle complicated cases and bring down mortality rates. By getting access to patient data and digitizing it, Smart-ICUs ensure that immediate assistance can be provided to the doctors and nursing staff at the bedside who can take necessary steps to save an individual’s life even in critical situations. 

The government’s flagship Ayushman Bharat scheme, championed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi aims to ensure that every Indian can get access to quality healthcare. With more and more hospitals, both government and private, reaching the remotest parts of the country and their traditional systems being modified and transformed using technology to create Smart-ICUs, it would mean that a large population of India will be able to get access to premium intensive care facilities.

 While this method of functioning has found early adoption in remote locations, the degree of efficiency and the rapidly improving technology is slowly making inroads into mainstream healthcare delivery - since this makes high quality care more accessible than conventional models which are always capacity limited. 

This will be a game-changer in ensuring that the fundamental right of Indian citizens’ right to life is realised. Technology has been one of the biggest drivers of progress and development in the 21st century so far, and it is now also enabling the healthcare system to become more efficient. With the rise of Smart-ICUs, India can now look forward to taking forward its healthcare system in the right direction and transforming its traditional ICUs to centers of patient centric care and excellence. 

The healthcare system in India has always been criticised for its below-average infrastructure and poor reach in the smaller cities and the hinterland. Often, it has been observed that people living in Tier 3 cities or rural parts of the country have to travel for hours to Tier 2 or Tier 1 cities before they can access quality healthcare.

At the same time, a large section of the Indian population still relies on government healthcare facilities for emergency situations. However, this puts undue pressure on the entire government healthcare system with thousands of people jostling to get access to doctors and beds. 

Scenes of people sleeping outside the hospitals and overcrowded OPDs are what comes to one’s mind when one thinks of government hospitals in India. This already stressed infrastructure was faced with an elephantine challenge when the COVID-19 pandemic spread across the country.

During the second wave, visuals of people desperately trying to get intensive care support but in vain became a usual occurrence from hospitals even in megacities such as Delhi, Mumbai and Lucknow. This led to the government making various announcements and taking new initiatives to equip government hospitals with appropriate facilities. 

 Making India’s healthcare system self-reliant is going to be a long and challenging task. Within that, the bigger challenge is to ensure that intensive care facilities can reach even the remotest parts of the country where hospitals do not have the necessary infrastructure and trained doctors to deal with emergency cases. It is important because getting immediate access to intensive care facilities means the chances of survival of any patient increase substantially. 

Therefore, the technology-driven Smart Intensive Care Units (ICU) are a much-needed step in the right direction for the country. The premise of such an ICU is that redundant tasks need to be removed and monotonous work needs to be offloaded from strained care providers. This then allows them to focus on the important task of patient care optimising their impact and efficiency. 

A Smart-ICU system often has multiple assistive tools and collaborative frameworks to reduce work burden. A major journal published a three-part series on the future of ICUs and how older iterations of telemedicine connect ICUs need to move towards a Smart-ICU concept.    

Smart-ICU platforms allows highly trained doctors and nurses to connect to hospitals that don't have access to ICU specialists 24 hours a day, seven days a week. And also digitises and analyses patient data, providing clinical decision support to both bedside teams and remote doctors. This then allows evidence-based treatment for ICU patients which improves outcomes ultimately saving lives.  

This unique mechanism of integrating technology into the existing hospital infrastructure is now converting traditional ICUs into a highly efficient system that is equipped to handle complicated cases and bring down mortality rates. By getting access to patient data and digitizing it, Smart-ICUs ensure that immediate assistance can be provided to the doctors and nursing staff at the bedside who can take necessary steps to save an individual’s life even in critical situations. 

The government’s flagship Ayushman Bharat scheme, championed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi aims to ensure that every Indian can get access to quality healthcare. With more and more hospitals, both government and private, reaching the remotest parts of the country and their traditional systems being modified and transformed using technology to create Smart-ICUs, it would mean that a large population of India will be able to get access to premium intensive care facilities.

While this method of functioning has found early adoption in remote locations, the degree of efficiency and the rapidly improving technology is slowly making inroads into mainstream healthcare delivery - since this makes high quality care more accessible than conventional models which are always capacity limited. 

This will be a game-changer in ensuring that the fundamental right of Indian citizens’ right to life is realised. Technology has been one of the biggest drivers of progress and development in the 21st century so far, and it is now also enabling the healthcare system to become more efficient. With the rise of Smart-ICUs, India can now look forward to taking forward its healthcare system in the right direction and transforming its traditional ICUs to centers of patient centric care and excellence.