Mumbai: Aiming to reduce crowding at civic hospitals, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) is planning to develop a mobile application, which will help patients to schedule their doctor appointments. Civic officials plan to meet the information technology department later this week, to discuss the issue.
The four civic hospitals witness a footfall of more than 15,000 patients daily, which leads to chaos at hospital and it is near-impossible for doctors to attend to every patient who comes to the outpatient department.
Additional Municipal Commissioner (AMC), Health, Suresh Kakani, said working on this application will begin after this meeting. “We plan to come up with a patient-friendly application, which will make it easy for them to obtain a doctor's appointment. The application will be developed within three months,” he said.
The application will provide all the basic details of the hospitals, doctors, counsellors and other facilities. Many a time, patients have to keep doing the rounds of the hospital if doctors are not available on a given day. But the new app will ensure this does not happen. It will show the days and times the health specialist is available at the hospitals. “This will reduce the workload on doctors and the travel time of patients, as they will know in advance when the doctor is available and will have a scheduled appointment. Patients can also book their MRI and CTI scan appointments beforehand,” said a senior health official.
Health activists have mixed feelings about this move. On the one hand, they are happy because it will benefit thousands of patients whose time is wasted waiting for their turn. However, "The BMC often comes up with an idea for the benefit of patients, but most of the time it is just confined to paper. But if such an application sees the light of the day, both patients and doctors will benefit,” said an activist.
