Bengaluru: When Minister Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced a national telephoto health program, he brought two institutions in Bengaluru to Focus – Institute of International Information Technology, Bengaluru (IIIT-B) and the Institute of Mental Health and Nimhans (Nimhans).
For the team at IIIT-B, the news was surprising.
TK Srikanth, Co-Convenor, E-Health Research Center in IIInb, has led the team marking the technology aspects of the program.
His team will now take the Karnataka e-Manas project to the national level.
“Officially launched in June 2020, the e-Manas project aims to integrate all patient data that approach various clinics or hospitals,” said Srikanth.
“This will help the integration of a smooth service.
So, if a patient goes to the hospital, his previous record of mental health can be accessed by staff, with the patient’s approval.
This is similar to the system in the Ayushman Bharat digital mission and we will be involved in integrating it from the corner Look at mental health.
“With Nimhans launched 23 nodal offices for telephoto counseling, data from tele-counseling will also be integrated into the platform.
The IIIT-B team is responsible for designing and developing a platform that will also help hospitals better comply with mental health laws.
“We have designed a platform for the country, but also keep in mind that we must be able to increase it for other countries if needs arise,” said Srikanth.
“So, the increase is not possible to prove a big challenge.
But we need to work with Nimhans and the center of various problems such as deployment decisions.” Divya Raj, Head of the Program, the E-Health Research Center, said the great effort had entered the project because it was the first solution Of the kind of mental health.
After working in the corporate world for more than two decades, Raj has moved to IIIT-B to be part of public and social initiatives.
“Problems like data privacy are very important,” said Raj.
“It is very encouraging that the government takes it national.
This shows the government’s determination in mental health is very important for developing countries such as India.” The idea of ​​e-manas came four years ago from Ajay Seth, the secretary of the current economic affairs.
“He suggested the idea of ​​a platform to integrate all mental health services,” said Srikanth.
PhD in computer science from Cornell University in 1986, and a BTECH in engine techniques from the Indian Technology Institute, Madras, Srikanth has been with IIIT-B for more than eight years now.
“We have made proposals to increase them, but we did not expect it to be announced in the budget.
It was surprising,” he said.