Yet another computer server crash this year delayed AIIMS patients. The hospital cited maintenance, but insiders say a manual backup plan was essential to avoid patient harassment…
After the hospital’s computer server broke on Wednesday, hundreds of AIIMS patients had to wait two days to register in OPD and other departments. This is the second hospital computer outage in a year. Officials say services were restored by Thursday afternoon.
The hospital’s management blamed maintenance, but sources stated a software upgrade crashed the system.
India's top medical institute's systems had crashed before, but this time for a different reason. Officials should have had a manual backup plan to avoid harassing innocent patients.OPD registration, sample collection, report generation, invoicing, and hospital admission were delayed due to the damage.
AIIMS patients waiting for doctor consultations had to wait hours due to staff manual registration. A woman from Ghaziabad came to the medicine department to see a doctor for her extreme stomach pain, however her card was not made after one hour in the queue. Staff told her the delay was due to manual handling since computers were down.
Both new and existing patients who had diagnostic tests at the center suffered. Server difficulties prevented bar code generation, causing long lines outside smart lab. Similar situation at institute billing counters. Since test reports were not online and patients had to print them, doctors stated therapy was delayed. Sources indicated the lack of online bed availability delayed admissions.
Since Wednesday morning, most patient care administrative activities were done manually.
AIIMS’s leading doctor advised the administration to use parallel servers to run the institute smoothly. Online facilities are good, but technological issues are problematic. Manual system for patient services is required. “If something happens then the entire system would collapse and the institute has already faced such situation when its servers were hacked last November,” stated another doctor, alleging the server is packed with data.
Conclusion
A computer system crash delayed patient registration at AIIMS, India’s top medical institute, for two days. Maintenance work was first blamed for the disaster, but software updates were later recommended. The system crashed, disrupting OPD registration, sample collection, report generation, billing, and admission. Manual registration delayed doctor visits by hours. Old patients getting diagnostic testing were also delayed. There were long lines outside smart laboratories and no online lab reports. A senior AIIMS doctor advised a parallel server system for smooth operation and a manual mechanism for patient-related services, as the institute suffered similar challenges in November last year.
