Headquartered in Bangalore, Sakra is a joint venture company between Kirloskar Group, Toyota Tsusho and Secom Hospitals. It is a provider of state-of- the art infrastructure with bi-plane hybrid OT, Intraoperative CT and integrated modular OTs and offers solutions in Cardiac Sciences, Neuro Sciences, Orthopaedics, Renal Sciences, Digestive & Hepatopancreatobiliary Sciences.


In today’s scenario lot of hospitals are using HIS to server better to patients. Lots of new dynamics are emerging in hospitals to stay upbeat in the market, which makes them to opt for more and more technologies to serve better and provide cutting edge services to patients.

As Pharmacy is an important department in any hospital, it demands IT enabled services to be used to avoid errors, timely dispensing of medicines, manage lean inventory level while also taking care out of stock situation which may lead to disruption in patient’s treatment and may also impact patient’s life.

Now in all major Hospital Information System (HIS) there are multiple features which can be used to benefit the patient as well as Hospital itself. But unfortunately, they are not used in most of the hospitals due to various reasons.

Online prescription is one of the many features provided by the HIS. By using this not only hospitals avoid delays in medication. it avoids LASA (Look Alike Sound Like) errors which are common. It also avoids errors made by nursing staffs, who usually indent on behalf of doctor’s prescription written on patient activity chart.

Now a days, lot of drug database are there in market which can be integrated with HIS, which provide lot of features like Drug to drug interaction, Allergies, Monograph, Contraindications, Adverse effects etc.

Using Barcode is another powerful option that can be used in hospital for dispensing of medicines at IP/OP pharmacy, which is usually not used in most of hospitals. By using Barcode we can not only avoid wrong dispensing of drugs at stores but also provide faster delivery of correct drugs and also the right batch billed on the patients. Due to not using this system there is a mismatch in what batch of drug is sued to a patient and what is billed in the system. There is always mismatch in the system batch wise item Vs physical stock. This also leads to loss of money for hospital in managing near expiry or expired drugs, which in case can be avoided and managed well if we use barcode.

Re Order Level is also another important feature which can be used by the hospitals to manage their inventory levels to cut down their inventory carrying cost and also utilize their blocked money for other hospital operations. By using auto indenting feature hospital can also avoid stock out situations.

Hospitals are using the best Industry practices and learning from other industries. One such example is JIT( Just in time). This reduces the need for storing expensive inventory and thereby helps in managing space and finances. Now days we get most of the drugs within hours and need not require to be stocked in huge quantity. But reduced inventory means chances of stock out situation is more. But using features like auto indenting and auto purchase requisition can take care of such scenarios. Many hospitals have starting using ERP as their back end process software like SAP / MS – Axapta etc. So HIS is used for patient related activity and all other back end process like Accounting, Cost/Profit center accounting, Asset management, Purchase, HR etc. And interfaces are developed for Billing Info, GRN and Inventory consumption. ERP adds an added advantage to analyze and manage business functions in better way. Features like Cost / Profit center accounting, Asset Management, Purchase & supply chain, Material requirement planning (MRP) etc. can be used in greater extent and in real time context.

For OP Pharmacy, putting Queue Management helps in enhancing patient experience and avoids chaos.

Now hospital have started using the Pneumatic chutes to aid in faster delivery of medicines/ consumables in hospitals thereby reducing the waiting time and saving on manpower costs.

As we bring in more technology at competitive pricing, we will see a day when complete inventory will be managed through Virtual Inventory Techniques at an affordable cost.