Thursday, January 1, 2026
PGIMER, Chandigarh selects our AI system to digitise OPD Visits
PGIMER, Chandigarh selects our AI system to digitise OPD Visits
Anukriti Chaudhari
PGIMER, Chandigarh: A medical institute of national importance
The Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research, Chandigarh (PGIMER), is widely regarded as one of India’s leading medical institutions, renowned for patient care, medical education, and research. With an annual patient footfall of ~3,000,000 and ~1,700 indexed scientific publications each year, PGIMER is recognized as an Institute of National Importance[1].
PGIMER’s Department of Gastroenterology is considered among the leading gastroenterology centers in the country. The department provides healthcare services for ~70,000 patients every year, while maintaining an active academic and research program[1]. Faculty members have collectively authored over 1,000 publications in national and international journals[2] and are currently engaged in multiple investigator-led research projects supported by grants from national funding agencies, including the Department of Biotechnology (DBT), Department of Science and Technology (DST), and the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) [3].
Large scale patient health record repository
Over the years, physicians at the Department of Gastroenterology, PGIMER, Chandigarh have maintained detailed longitudinal health records for thousands of patients using a file-paper system. Each patient file contains dated information on past medical history, examination, investigations, treatment received, final diagnosis and advice at discharge.
Thousands of medical records are retrieved and manually processed to extract required information for research purposes every year[1]. However, manual data processing is time-consuming and limits research velocity. In addition, it constrains the scale of data that can be analysed, ultimately affecting the generalisability of the insights generated.
AI-powered Health Record System to Accelerate Research
To address the challenges, the Department of Gastroenterology, PGIMER, Chandigarh has opted for our AI system, implemented by Oxalis Technologies, to digitise Outpatient Department (OPD) visits data. Physicians can upload images of handwritten notes directly from the field into our application. Our AI system processes the unstructured files, extracts relevant information from images and automatically generates answers for all the questions in the OPD template form from the source files [4]. Using our file-storage system, physicians can store patient visit data in folders, search and retrieve past data instantaneously, enabling longitudinal tracking for seamless care coordination. Since the source files are securely stored, any newly defined clinical variables can be retrospectively populated automatically by querying the database—enabling backfilling without manual data processing. The application enables clinicians to instantaneously export the health record data as structured CSV/Excel directly that can be used for further research and analyses.
This novel initiative, led by the Department of Gastroenterology, PGIMER, Chandigarh, applies multimodal AI systems to generate structured OPD visit data and is expected to enable large-scale data collection, empower researchers to rapidly analyse large volumes of patient data, and test hypotheses and generate generalisable insights to advance gastroenterology practice and research in India.
PGIMER, Chandigarh: A medical institute of national importance
The Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research, Chandigarh (PGIMER), is widely regarded as one of India’s leading medical institutions, renowned for patient care, medical education, and research. With an annual patient footfall of ~3,000,000 and ~1,700 indexed scientific publications each year, PGIMER is recognized as an Institute of National Importance[1].
PGIMER’s Department of Gastroenterology is considered among the leading gastroenterology centers in the country. The department provides healthcare services for ~70,000 patients every year, while maintaining an active academic and research program[1]. Faculty members have collectively authored over 1,000 publications in national and international journals[2] and are currently engaged in multiple investigator-led research projects supported by grants from national funding agencies, including the Department of Biotechnology (DBT), Department of Science and Technology (DST), and the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) [3].
Large scale patient health record repository
Over the years, physicians at the Department of Gastroenterology, PGIMER, Chandigarh have maintained detailed longitudinal health records for thousands of patients using a file-paper system. Each patient file contains dated information on past medical history, examination, investigations, treatment received, final diagnosis and advice at discharge.
Thousands of medical records are retrieved and manually processed to extract required information for research purposes every year[1]. However, manual data processing is time-consuming and limits research velocity. In addition, it constrains the scale of data that can be analysed, ultimately affecting the generalisability of the insights generated.
AI-powered Health Record System to Accelerate Research
To address the challenges, the Department of Gastroenterology, PGIMER, Chandigarh has opted for our AI system, implemented by Oxalis Technologies, to digitise Outpatient Department (OPD) visits data. Physicians can upload images of handwritten notes directly from the field into our application. Our AI system processes the unstructured files, extracts relevant information from images and automatically generates answers for all the questions in the OPD template form from the source files [4]. Using our file-storage system, physicians can store patient visit data in folders, search and retrieve past data instantaneously, enabling longitudinal tracking for seamless care coordination. Since the source files are securely stored, any newly defined clinical variables can be retrospectively populated automatically by querying the database—enabling backfilling without manual data processing. The application enables clinicians to instantaneously export the health record data as structured CSV/Excel directly that can be used for further research and analyses.
This novel initiative, led by the Department of Gastroenterology, PGIMER, Chandigarh, applies multimodal AI systems to generate structured OPD visit data and is expected to enable large-scale data collection, empower researchers to rapidly analyse large volumes of patient data, and test hypotheses and generate generalisable insights to advance gastroenterology practice and research in India.
