Panaji, May 25 (IANS): The Goa government will launch an ambitious project of digitisation of medical records of patients in all government health facilities, right from the Public Health Centres to the apex government medical institute, the Goa Medical College, officials said on Wednesday.

Briefing reporters, Goa Infotech Corporation Chairman, Dr Chandrakant Shetye, also said that the digitisation project would be undertaken in three months from now and would be funded by the Central government.

"This will be a boon to people, not just in terms of saving data, but also for the treatment of people. Down the line, it will make it easier for doctors to treat patients. More than that, once you store data, you cannot fabricate data in medico-legal cases. We are going to start it within the next three months," he said.

The focus, Shetye said, was to digitise medical data across all tiers of healthcare.

"In the sense that, if any patient goes to a health centre or at Asilo (a district hospital). That record will be tied up to all these peripheral health centres, community health centre, district hospitals and Goa Medical College. So even if the patient goes to a peripheral centre and if he goes to the GMC in a month, we can trace his record," he said.

"As a result, a lot of paperwork will be done away with and the diagnosis will be better. Sometimes, what happens is patients forget what tablets were prescribed to him. This project is a Central government-funded project," he added.