A system that helps doctors and attendants

Hassle-free: Doctors look at the working of the bar code
system for testing samples at Rajiv Gandhi Government General Hospital in Chennai.
| Photo Credit: AKHILA EASWARAN

The long queues of patient relatives waiting to hand over the blood samples of their hospitalised family members and to collect the test results outside the biochemistry laboratory at Rajiv Gandhi Government General Hospital (RGGGH) have come down. The reason: doctors can access laboratory investigation reports on their mobile phones and at the wards through a web portal, doing away with the need for patient attendants to wait outside the central laboratory to collect the reports. RGGGH’s Institute of Biochemistry was the first in the government sector in Tamil Nadu to launch such a web portal allowing doctors to easily access laboratory reports. The institute has also introduced a bar code system that has made workflow smooth as well as hassle-free for patient attendants.

Over 1,000 samples a day

The institute receives around 1,700-2,000 samples every day. There has been a 60% reduction in the number of persons queuing outside the laboratory after the web portal was launched a few months ago. In many cases, the turnaround time is two hours, according to doctors. RGGGH Dean E. Theranirajan says a lot of reforms have happened in the biochemistry laboratory. “Patient attendants need not come to collect the reports. This way, huge crowding outside the laboratory has been minimised.”

Testing samples from the hospital’s emergency unit has been fast-tracked as the pneumatic tube system is running full-fledged in the last six months. “Samples lifted from patients arriving at the emergency ward located in Tower 2 are transported and dropped at the three central laboratories (biochemistry, pathology, and microbiology) in Tower 1 through the pneumatic tube system. These samples are immediately processed, and the results are available in 40 minutes,” says K. Pramila, Director, Institute of Biochemistry, Madras Medical College and RGGGH. RGGGH plans to expand the facility to all the three tower blocks so that the process of receiving samples and issuing reports are made easy.

Point-of-care testing

In fact, the institute has introduced point-of-care testing for cardiac biomarkers in the emergency department, facilitating rapid diagnosis of patients with chest pain, she says, adding: “When a patient arrives with complaint of chest pain, cardiac biomarker tests are done at the bedside to quickly rule out myocardial infarction. This point-of-care testing facility allows clinicians to make a diagnosis within minutes.”

This is not all. The institute has been doing therapeutic drug monitoring for the last six to eight months in which patients who have undergone organ transplants (liver, kidney, and bone marrow) are monitored routinely to check whether the dosage of the immunosuppressant drugs prescribed are of the appropriate level. “If the dosage is low, it can lead to organ rejection, and if it is high, it could have toxic effects. Based on the reports, doctors can titrate the dosage while they are in admission,” Dr. Pramila says.

The institute has also introduced testing for inflammatory markers for all patients with fever and sepsis for diagnosis and monitoring purposes, and anaemia profile. “The laboratory also shares and highlights critical values identified on testing samples on a WhatsApp group, alerting the respective heads of departments and enabling doctors to take up required interventions immediately,” Dr. Theranirajan says.