Jipmer faces workflow disruptions after migration to new software

Jipmer is witnessing workflow disruptions across a range of critical hospital functions following the migration to an upgraded hospital information management system (HIMS). The JIPMER Faculty Association (JFA) has expressed concern over the adverse impact of the rollout on patient care.

JIPMER had launched the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission (ABDM)-compliant hospital information management system, e-Sushrut, developed by the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), as part of a modernisation drive, and to align with the ABDM’s goal to ensure seamless, secure, and standardised electronic health records for patients.

Ahead of the HIMS going live on January 1, Jipmer had warned of “minor operational adjustments or brief delays” during the initial phase of transition to the new system, as healthcare personnel adapted to the enhanced digital workflows. The institution had also assured patients that there would be no compromise whatsoever in clinical care, treatment, or emergency services, and that adequate support mechanisms and monitoring arrangements were in place to facilitate smooth implementation and uninterrupted patient services during the transition phase.

However, sources said the disruption had been of an order of magnitude that was not anticipated. “We are fully engaged in sorting out the issues at the earliest”, a JIPMER spokesman said.

A team of service engineers from Delhi is currently in JIPMER to set things right, he added.

After facing major hiccups during the first few days of the transition, the JFA has written to the JIPMER Director expressing serious concerns over the manner in which the new system has been introduced.

The suspension of existing HIS based patient management systems across all sections and departments has affected admission, discharge, birth, death, medico-legal cases, prescription, investigations and outpatient management, the JFA said.

While categorically stating that it was not opposed to the implementation of a C-DAC system, but rather was wholly supportive of embracing an upgraded and future-ready HIS, the JFA felt that the current approach to implementation has been “precipitous, inadequately planned, and insufficiently supported, leading to significant operational distress and direct patient suffering”.

According to the JFA, the management appeared to have bought into the IT wing’s “overly optimistic and inaccurate picture of preparedness”, and that systems were “ready” and workflows “incorporable”. The starkly different ground reality was that most clinical departments, especially Pathology and Radiology, were never presented with finalised workflows, structured demonstrations, or meaningful user testing prior to transition.

“The most alarming revelation during implementation has been that even basic framework-level designs for several laboratory modules and Radiology–PACS workflows were absent at the time of Go-Live”, the JFA said.

The JFA attributed the prevailing crisis not as “a consequence of resistance to reform, but rather the direct result of inadequate planning, misrepresentation of readiness, and failure of ownership by the IT wing”.

Contending that the implementation was undertaken without meaningful concurrence or formal validation from key stakeholders, the JFA added that despite repeated submission of detailed module requirements by laboratory teams, the workflows were neither designed nor aligned with suggested parameters. In several instances, workflows were developed using entirely different assumptions, rendering them unworkable in real clinical settings.

In the absence of formal gap analysis presented to stakeholders prior to Go-Live, workflows were clearly not ready, as evinced by continual on-site firefighting by engineers from Noideven, it pointed out.

The JFA has also complained about the grossly inadequate support from IT personnel during this critical phase. “Multiple distress calls went unanswered, with only three contact points provided for a transition affecting over 10,000 OPD patients daily. There appears to be no dedicated IT transition team proportionate to the scale of this institutional change”, the JFA stated.

As an example of the disconnect between recommended timelines and operational reality, the JFA pointed out that pathology workflows were given a completion window of “two hours,” whereas in reality they require months of iterative design and validation.

Flagging grave concern over data migration feasibility, the JFA sought the Director’s intervention to ensure urgent restoration of the totally disrupted patient management workflows and to extend the existing highly-customised and operationally matured HIS (Panacea) for at least six months with provisions for data migration.

Published – January 12, 2026 07:23 pm IST