Its time to digitally record Ayurveda Prakriti assessments through EHR software
In recent years, great efforts are taken by governments across the globe to go digital in the healthcare and medicine sector. India is not far and the government is introducing policies and schemes that help the health industry grow digitally. Presently over 4 lakh practitioners worldwide are practicing Ayurveda, making it one of the most oldest, prevalent and significant systems of medicine.
Ayurveda depends on three basic characteristics for the holistic management of a person’s health…
- The nature of a person’s constitution- Prakriti
- The nature of the imbalance – Vikriti
- The nature of the medicine
What is Prakriti?
Prakriti is a Sanskrit word, where ‘pra’ means original and ‘kruti’ means creation. Prakriti includes the physical and psychological constitution of a person. Their natural tendencies, psychological functioning, personality type etc. The Prakriti of a person is based on the balance of the three doshas – Vata, Pitta and Kapha.
Ayurveda treatment is centered around re-aligning a person’s Vikriti towards his/her Prakriti. So correct identification and recording of a person’s Prakriti is crucial to decide the appropriate treatments.
Now is the best time for Ayurveda medicine to transition with the help of EHR
Information and communication technologies which are helping western medicine to digitize patient information, are increasingly being used to transform Ayurveda also. The main obstacle in the path of this vital change is the practitioners’ unwillingness to opt for the change and transform from the pen and paper documents to digitization. The transition model of any EHR is basically designed to organically preserve patients’ records and medical history including e-prescribing.
Many modern EHRs provide a convenient cloud based medium through which all these can be adopted easily and conveniently. However it is important to choose standards based EHR that ensures the privacy of patient data to ensure that it is inter-operable with not just other software but also devices – computers to tablets and smart-phones and smart-watches. A flexible EHR model, based on standards practices is needed to properly support Ayurveda practice. It should have capability to support and extend the Basic Medical Record(BMR) to align to the requirements of all practitioners.
The popularity and sustainability of e-Health technology is understood to require three critical factors, namely
- The existence of reliable technology
- A demonstrable clinical benefit inherent in the e-Health technology and
- An economic case for sustainable deployment
Given the modern cloud and Internet technology, all this can be done at an affordable cost without requiring heavy investment. The advancement of IT infrastructure and it’s accessibility has enabled the development of EHRs at reasonable costs.
AyushEHR
Presently, technology revolution in Ayurveda is possible without the expenditure of huge sum of resources if the architecture allows organic drive by the end user demand. With the growing use of electronic devices, AyushEHR has developed an interface that is both computer and tablet friendly. The interface for an Ayurveda consultation is modified and made user-friendly for clinicians and patients, to facilitate the entry of data from a patient consultation directly into a digital repository quickly and easily without a hassle. The design of AyushEHR is designed to be easy for an Ayurveda clinician.
The patient’s Dosha can be recorded digitally in an easy and seamless manner for reference. This is a critical celebratory factor for the adoption of EHR in Ayurveda practice because Dosha assessment is an important element of every consultation.
The next organic evolution of EHR adoption in Ayurveda is related to documented validation of effectiveness. However, with modern innovation and advancement, it’s impact has grown to other things such as patient feedback, testimonials and creation of case studies. AyushEHR as a software has been developed to provide a different perspective to Ayurveda and its dependability. Contact us to know more..
