PM to open mega hospital with hi-tech centralised automated lab; to have 7-storey research block

The state-of-the-art Amrita Hospital has a dedicated seven-storey research block and has been constructed over a period of six years under the auspices of the Mata Amritanandmayi Math.

A 2,600-bed new private hospital equipped with cutting-edge technology, including a centralized fully automated laboratory, patient-centric wards, and OPDs, and built on a sprawling 130-acre campus with sustainability in mind is all set to be opened by Prime Minister Narendra Modi here next.

The state-of-the-art Amrita Hospital has a dedicated seven-story research block and has been constructed over six years under the auspices of the Mata Amritanandmayi Math. The hospital is slated to be inaugurated by the prime minister on August 24.

The new super specialty hospital will initially open with 500 beds and is expected to be fully operational in a phase-wise manner in the course of the next five years. The hospital with 81 specialties, once fully operational, is billed to be the largest private hospital in Delhi-NCR and the country, its officials said.

According to Dr. Sanjeev K Singh, Resident Medical Director of the hospital, the project was first envisioned in 2012 and the initial plan was to site it in Delhi but eventually, it was decided to build it in Faridabad. The groundwork for the project had started in mid-2016 was delayed due to multiple factors like the acquisition of farmlands, and was heavily stalled during the lockdowns induced by the COVID-19 pandemic.

''However, Covid also taught us lessons, and some of the designs were redrawn and certain elements were incorporated to make the hospital environment safer for people as Covid infection is now being assumed to spread largely through droplets or air. So, we have built something called a negative pressure room - a kind of an isolation room, in which suspected cases can be kept away from others. This is different from a regular isolation room,'' he told PTI in an interview.

In such rooms, the air pressure inside the room is lower than the air pressure outside it and non-contaminated filtered air can flow into the negative pressure room, while contaminated air is sucked out of the room with exhaust systems, which are built with filters that clean the air before it is pumped out and away from a healthcare facility, the doctor explained.

''Besides, our system attempts to make the process as contactless as possible. So, every doctor will have a dedicated digital tablet, meaning it can't be shared with others, which will have all the details and history of patients. This step is also in line with the vision of sustainability in the project to make it as paperless as possible, '' he added.

Amrita Hospital is the second hospital built under the aegis of the Mata Amritanandmayi Math in the country, the first being set up in Kochi in 1998. The new mega-hospital in Faridabad's Sector 88 near Delhi-Mathura Road has a built-up area of one crore sq ft, and the campus will also have a medical college, a dedicated research block, and eight centers of excellence -- gastro-sciences, renal sciences, bone diseases, and trauma, transplants, and mother and child care.

The hospital buildings will span 36 lakh sq ft in a built-up area, with a 14-floor tower housing key medical facilities. There is also a helipad facility on the rooftop, officials said. The hospital built with a patient-centric approach will also have ''India's largest facility'' to tackle infectious diseases, a spokesperson of the hospital said, adding, that it will have 54 critical care units, smart ICUs with 534 critical care beds that are digitally monitored round-the-clock, and 64 fully networked modular operation theatres. Once fully operational, the hospital will have around 10,000 staff and more than 800 doctors, she said.

In a modular ICU ward, two patients kept in adjacent rooms with sliding glass doors can be monitored simultaneously with a small common nursing station manned by one nurse, who can call nursing assistance or doctors just with the press of color-coded buttons installed next to the patient's bed.

''In terms of cutting-edge technology being introduced also to make the system more patient-centric, from each room in critical care or other wards, blood or other samples can be taken within the room only, and then the vial can be sent to the centralized lab using pneumatic tubes, with no human interference. That way, the scope of contact also gets reduced,'' Singh said.

Each vial has a bar code, and once the vial reaches the collection room, and is manually moved to the lab system, it is sent to the designated machine automatically guided by the bar code, whether it is for serum or plasma extraction or blood test, etc. It is a massive automated system, he said.

The resident medical director of the hospital said, besides giving the best of the healthcare, cutting-edge medical research will be a strong thrust area, and ''we are in the process of entering into research collaborations with some of the world's biggest names in medical science, including several top US universities''.

The research block will have different segments, including a small animals lab in the basement, a biorepository, a large capacity electron microscope (weighing about 15 tonnes), an exhibition of major research globally, including by Nobel laureates, exclusive Grade A to D GMP (goods manufacturing practice) labs, bioinformatics with AI and machine learning, integrated research, and integrated medicine on the top floor, he said, adding, there will also be a focus on identifying newer diagnostic markers.

''Our PM talks of 'Jai Anusandhan', so it is in line with that vision too,'' Singh said.