Madhya Pradesh’s paperless hospitals logged 1,771 registrations on day one. Now comes the product question
Published · By Gaurav Phogat
Madhya Pradesh began moving government hospitals onto a Rs 300 crore information system on 1 November, with Indore’s outpatient departments logging 1,771 digital registrations on day one. It is a sensible start. I read it as a digital product launch, which makes the next metric more interesting than the first.
What happened
eHealth Network reported on 2 November 2026 that Madhya Pradesh’s Health and Medical Education Department began its paperless transition on 1 November, under a Hospital Information Management System project valued at Rs 300 crore.
This article is part of the Industry Watch series, best read in order from the pillar.
Hospitals attached to MGM Medical College in Indore moved outpatient services onto the system on 31 October, recording 1,771 digital registrations: 1,537 at MY Hospital and 234 at MTH Hospital. Four other sites are live for outpatients. Gandhi Medical College in Bhopal ran a six-month pilot in three departments first. The inpatient module is on hold in Indore, as wards and nursing stations still need devices, and no timeline has been given.
My take
The sequencing looks right to me. A pilot, then outpatient registration, then inpatient once the devices arrive. A phased start is usually easier to correct than a single big-bang date.
But 1,771 registrations is a launch metric. It proves the system works and that staff used it. It says little about whether anything got better for the patient. In digital product terms, go-live is the start of measurement, not the result.
A hospital information system built for records becomes a patient product only when something reaches the patient: a token on the phone, a prescription they can find later, a report they do not have to carry. A July report in the Free Press Journal said the plan includes medicine slips sent to patients’ mobile phones. That is the feature I would watch, because it is where a back-office project becomes a relationship.
What most coverage missed
This matters to private hospitals too, and not because of competition. Public systems shape what patients expect. Once a family in Indore gets a digital token at a government hospital, a paper queue at a private one looks dated. ANI reported in July that India had created over 94 crore ABHA numbers, so digital identity in healthcare is no longer a niche idea.
The second point is about hardware. The inpatient pause comes down to devices at the point of use, per the report. Every digital leader has seen a version of this: a plan that budgets for software and assumes the last mile. Worth checking in your own rollout before someone else finds it.
What I would do
- Define the adoption metric before launch: track repeat use and digital share of registrations, not day-one volume.
- Name the patient-facing feature: if nothing reaches the patient’s phone in the first phase, say when it will.
- Audit your own OPD booking: if you run a private hospital, compare it with what patients now see in public systems. My booking flow study is a useful starting point.
- Budget the last mile: list devices, connectivity and training as line items next to the licence.
What to watch
- The digital share of outpatient registrations across Indore after 90 days.
- When the inpatient module restarts, and whether patients receive prescriptions on their phones.
- Whether other states copy the pilot, outpatient, inpatient sequence.
Source: eHealth Network. Figures as reported at the time of writing.
Sources and further reading
- July report in the Free Press Journal (freepressjournal.in)
- ANI reported in July (newsable.asianetnews.com)
- eHealth Network (ehealth.eletsonline.com)
Questions people ask
It is a Rs 300 crore HIMS project moving government hospitals to paperless working, starting 1 November 2026, according to eHealth Network.
eHealth Network reports 1,771 digital outpatient registrations, with 1,537 at MY Hospital and 234 at MTH Hospital.
The report says network cabling is installed in Indore, but wards and nursing stations still lack the desktops and tablets needed. No timeline has been given.
Track repeat use, the digital share of registrations and whether patients get something useful on their phones. Launch-day volume only shows that the system switched on.
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