After completing my +2 from St.
Lawrence High School, I got admission to Calcutta National Medical College in
1984. Our classes started on the auspicious occasion of Teachers’ Day viz., 5th September.
During my college years, I was
fortunate to become the Senior Class Assistant in Physiology and Junior Class
Assistant in OBG. Apart from that I also used to participate and conduct
quizzes, and, conduct many perpendicular events during AGON. Along with Anindya
Chaudhuri, I had represented our college in the very first Quiz Time (1985) conducted by Siddharth Basu in Door Darshan.
By the time we passed out, by
July 1989, and then completed our internship, by July 1990, most of us were
sure of our possible future careers.
Although I did house job (junior
residency) in General (Internal) Medicine from August 1990 to July 1991, that
discipline was my seventh career option! Somehow or other I felt that those
twelve months were the best in my life. Later on I penned down that experience
in a booklet – “হাসপাতালে একবছর”
from মনফিকরা (July
2016).
Psychiatry was higher in my
option list so I went to the Central Institute of Psychiatry, Kanke, Ranchi for
junior residency during August – September 1991.
However, my topmost option was
making a career in medical informatics. Unfortunately, in the early 90s, there
was no training available for informatics in India. The foreign institutes that
I wrote to wanted me to know the basics of computers. So I was thinking of
getting enrolled in NIIT.
Meanwhile, the School of
Biomedical Engineering, Institute of Technology, Banaras Hindu University,
(then IT-BHU, now IIT-BHU), Varanasi was offering Senior Research Fellowships
to MBBS graduates for pursuing PhD in Biomedical Engineering. Fortunately, I was
selected to join the institute in October 1991 and got registered for the PhD
from the session of March 1992. I could choose my PhD topic related to
development of an (artificial neural network based) clinical decision support
system for depression.
During this period (March 1992 –
March 1995), I once came to visit our Alma Mater and met many of our teachers.
One of the teachers whom I met, used to love me a lot, especially since Amit
Behl and myself had represented our college twice – in the 4th and 5th
years, in the Nestle Pediatric Quiz. He asked me that since now I am pursuing
PhD in Biomedical Engineering, what will I do after that? I answered that I
don’t know. I was shocked by his response to my answer. Generally a mild spoken
person, he got very angry and told me that I should have never chosen a career
where the future is uncertain!
I submitted my PhD thesis in
March 1995 and was invited to write a Guest Editorial for JIMA (Journal of the
Indian Medical Association). I wrote in May 1995 [Vol.
93(5): pp.165-6. PubMed PMID: 8834135] – Medical
informatics – are the doctors ready?
Meanwhile I joined the Machine
Intelligence Unit of Indian Statistical Institute in Calcutta as a Research
Associate in a CSIR project under Prof. Sankar K Pal. Subsequently, I also did
general practice in Durgapur for about a year and half, while my better half
Dr. Anindya was a Medical Officer in CRPF, posted in Durgapur. I did a couple
of short term contract jobs with South Eastern Railways and Bankura Sammilani
Medical College during 1998-99.
The first formal academic job that I
got was in Sikkim Manipal University from January 2000 I had joined as
Assistant Professor in Biophysics in the department of Physiology. I was
fortunate to teach the first batches
of both MBBS (2001-02) and B.Tech (1997-98) – for the latter an elective in the
8th Semester on Neuro-fuzzy computing. I was also the first Coordinator of the Distance
Education Directorate there.
From there I joined as the first faculty member (Assistant
Professor) of the School of Medical Science and Technology (SMST) in IIT
Kharagpur in August 2002. Then I joined the Amrita University, Coimbatore in
July 2004 as Associate Professor and started two courses – M.Sc. (Medical Informatics)
in 2005 (the first of its kind in
India) and M.Tech (BME) in 2007. In 2008 I became the Founding Chair of Biomedical Informatics in PSG Institute of
Medical Sciences and Research, Coimbatore. There I started offering online courses on Health Informatics and had more
students from abroad than from India.
During 2011-12 I became a Visiting
Professor in Health Informatics in Bangladesh, with the support of the
Rockefeller Foundation, for starting
a Masters Course in Health Informatics there.
From January 2013, I joined as the first Project Director of the Centre
for Health Informatics, National Health Portal, under the Ministry of Health
and Family Welfare, Government of India. Apart from developing the National
Health Portal from scratch, I was also instrumental in coordinating the eHealth
activities. I have been a member of the EHR Standards Committee since 2010. I
was also the Chairperson for revising the Concept Note on the proposed National
eHealth Authority of India. Consequently, the National Health Policy of 2017
clearly mentioned the setting up of the National Digital Health Authority to
facilitate the adoption of Digital Health in India. On another note I have also
been associated with the inclusion Software as a Medical Device in the Medical
Devices Act of 2017. I have also been actively associated with the Bureau of
Indian Standards for adopting and developing Standards for Health Informatics
and Active Assisted Living. In other words, the “National” of my college is
still inspiring me to undertake many activities of “National” importance.
In August 2017, I briefly returned to
academics as Dean (Academics and Student Affairs) and Professor (Health
Informatics) in the International Institute of Health Management Research,
Delhi.
I have been appointed to the Board of
Governors of the Washington Medical Science Institute, Saint Lucia, English
Caribbean. I am also IMA Honorary Professor (2017-20) and Distinguished Fellow,
HITLAB. I am a Fellow and Faculty of PSG-FAIMER Regional Institute, and have been
Chair of HL7 India (2011-13), and, President of the Indian Association for
Medical Informatics (IAMI – 2016). I’m a Founder Member of HL7 FHIR Foundation.
Now I am an independent consultant on
Digital Health Standards and look forward to reinforcing the Digital Health
Activities in India and elsewhere.