The EMR system also offered analytical data. Critical surgeries have separate modules, which, over a period of time, has been able to prescribe evidence-based medication. That's not all, even the drug inventory used the EMR system. "The store prescribes and disburses medicines according to expiry dates, so even inventory management is on the network," he says.

The EMR like most other apps in the hospital runs off a network. As the hospital banked more and more on its network, it began to show signs of strain and over time, network performance became a life-threatening issue. To make matters worse, the network did not have a proper monitoring system. Soon, the hospital began to be plagued by long hours of downtime, often because of network problems. This resulted in functional delays of the system, which had a direct impact on patient services.

"The last time it happened, we had a downtime of seven to eight hours, when there was no billing either. There was a lot of traffic that got stuck, it was a total collapse," remembers Manavalan.

Ironically, locating some of the problems took about several hours while fixing them took a few minutes. "Identifying the trouble used to take so long because we had a very large network of at least 40 to 50 components," points out Manavalan.

But when you run a hospital, a few minutes of downtime can be fatal. Sankara Nethralaya needed 100 percent uptime service from its IT infrastructure and every day it waited for that, it put the lives of its patients in danger.