Over the past few years of practicing our profession of providing management consulting and implementing VATIM™ LIS at over 400 centres, we have come across many situations where Diagnostic Centres and Laboratories have come to us after having burnt their fingers trying to develop their own LIS with the help of software companies who have no experience or inadequate experience of Laboratory processes and issues.

Just as one does not go to a general practitioner (however good and however competent) for getting a supra major surgery, in the same way it does not make any logical or business sense to go to a software company to develop an LIS for one’s Laboratory or Diagnostic Centre. One should go to a consulting company, which has specialized LIS products and implementing methodologies to ensure success.

Bigger and profitable Centres are able recover from their mistakes by retaining professional companies like VAHSPL and implementing a good LIS as almost 40% of our 400 Centres have done. However, it has been our observation that growing and charitable Diagnostic Centres and Laboratories neither have the financial capacity nor the management vision to take this important step towards restoring the health of the Centre.

To prevent more such growing and Charitable diagnostic centres from talking a wrong step and regretting it, as a part of our mission to “INTRODUCE & INTERNALIZE BEST PRACTICES IN INDIAN DIAGNOSTIC SEGMENT”, our Principal Consultant and CEO took the unusual step to launch in May/ June 2005, a special scheme to aid growing and genuinely Charitable Diagnostic Centres and Laboratories.

Under this scheme named VATIMA (VAHSPL Aid for Small & Charitable Diagnostic Centres and Laboratories), VAHSPL waives (either partially or fully) the VATIM™ LIS license fees, which can range from a minimum of Rs 3 lacs to Rs 15 lacs depending on the modules and the size of the Centre. VAHSPL charges only for the LIS implementation and the Annual Maintenance at concessional rates. With this approach, those G & C Diagnostic Centres and Laboratories which would have otherwise taken disastrous short cuts by dealing with inexperienced software companies, are able to get the tried and tested VATIM™ LIS working for them at a fraction of the real price.

Although our satisfaction level in assisting Government Diagnostic Centres and Laboratories is rather low because of the lack of authority and accountability in the management to ensure compliance by junior staff and the lack of political will to crack down on malpractices which are rampant, our experience with helping privately managed G and C Diagnostic Centres and Laboratories through VATIMA have been very gratifying.

In the last 2 months or so, we have helped TWO small and charitable Diagnostic Centres and Laboratories to implement VATIM™ LIS and they have been able to go LIVE on all modules of VATIM™ LIS in amazingly short durations of 14 days utilizing only 5- 6 days of our consultant’s time. All this has been possible only because of the total commitment of the top management and key users and the effectiveness of the Rapid Implementation Methodology perfected by VAHSPL Solution Experts.

Our VATIMA Committee, receives no less than 3-4 applications each month for VATIMA aid from centres as far as Guwahati, Ajmer, Rajkot and Trivandrum. We are gearing up to support 100-150 such centres all over India in the next 12 – 18 months.