West Bengal Plans to Launch E-prescription Throughout State

In West Bengal's state-run medical schools and hospitals, doctors' prescriptions will soon be typed rather than handwritten.

The state health department has decided to begin the first phase of e-prescription implementation from more than 900 primary health centers located throughout the state. It will eventually be made available to medical schools and other hospitals. For this purpose, the health department has asked each district to nominate a nodal officer.

The health units from which the first phase of e-prescription will be launched have been identified, according to a health official, and the necessary hardware has been shared. By June 30, all of the identified hospitals must have completed the implementation process. In the interim, the IT division of the health department will provide training.

According to officials, making the prescription digital will make it simpler to generate and maintain data such as a patient's disease profile, medical history record, and use of generic medications.

E-prescription is now used by the majority of private hospitals in Kolkata. Some teaching hospitals, like Seth Sukhlal Karnani Memorial Hospital (SSKM), as well as a few hospitals in districts like Howrah, have already implemented e-prescription in departments like gastroenterology. However, officials stated that this was only fragmented and needed to be digitized across all government hospitals' departments.

It is anticipated that the decision made by the West Bengal health department to implement electronic prescriptions in all state-run health facilities this year will result in a long-term solution to the nascent issue of preserving patient data and case histories.