Fortis, GE set up Asia's first remote intensive care units at Raipur, Dehradun

Fortis Healthcare and GE Healthcare yesterday announced the launch of Asia's first electronic intensive care unit (eICU) facility, CritiNext.

The eICU services being offered by CritiNext makes speciality critical care accessible and affordable to critically ill patients in small towns of India. The CritiNext e-ICU is powered by

US diversified engineering group General Electric has has developed the eICU facility though its healthcare unit, GE Healthcare. the EICU will be operated by Fortis Healthcare. CritiNext, India's as well as Asia's first eICU covers 34 ICU beds in two small hospitals based in Raipur and Dehradun. The two companies plan to extend the facility to 500 ICU beds in 20 small towns by 2014.

Aditya Vij, CEO, Fortis Healthcare Ltd said, "We are pleased to be the first healthcare institution in India and Asia to offer valuable life-saving eICU services. The brilliance is not in the technology alone, but the fact that we can use the technology to help physicians practice evidence based medicine. In a couple of years, we believe that this will be the accepted standard of care for patients in India and help to save more lives."

The CritiNext eICU enables a remote hospital to provide advanced consultation, care and monitoring to their critically ill in-patients without having to physically transfer them to super-speciality hospitals, since transporting a critically ill patient from one facility to another, especially a distant hospital, can be risky due to  clinical deterioration, the stress caused by transportation, or rven road transportation hazards.

CritiNext eICU help provide expert care to the patient at the local hospital helping avoid inter-hospital transfer and risks. more over these units could help meet the shortage of critical care staff in remote areas and enable physicians in remote health facilities to manage ICUs more efficiently.