Mumbai | September 9, 2026
The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation has begun a pilot implementation of its Hospital Management Information System (HMIS) at Lokmanya Tilak Municipal General Hospital in Sion, as part of a wider plan to digitise services across its hospitals, municipal officials said on Wednesday.
The system is intended to make healthcare services more accessible, transparent and timely for residents by moving key hospital processes online. The first phase will cover outpatient registration, patient medical histories, examinations, medicine-related information and digital payment facilities, according to additional municipal commissioner (city) Prajakta Verma-Lavangare.
Verma-Lavangare shared the details with reporters after inspecting the pilot project at Sion Hospital. She said the administration was focusing on the digitisation of all BMC hospitals, while also working on online payments, public grievance redressal, recruitment, hospital cleanliness and public-private partnerships.
The HMIS pilot is expected to reduce paperwork in hospital administration. Sion Hospital’s outpatient department records around 15,000 patients each day, and municipal officials said recording patient information through the system could help reduce waiting time during registration.
Digital payment facilities are also being introduced. Ten point-of-sale machines have been installed at registration counters to support digital payments, including payments through the Unified Payments Interface. The municipal administration said online payment would be part of the first stage of the hospital digitisation programme.
A second phase is planned to include the use of artificial intelligence technology, including text-to-speech tools, for recording patients’ medical details. Under the proposed process, information spoken by doctors could be automatically converted into text, potentially reducing the time required for doctors and patients to complete documentation.
The municipal administration has identified background noise in government hospitals as a technical challenge for the proposed system. Doctors often speak with patients amid crowded outpatient departments, and officials said the technology would need to distinguish the correct patient-doctor conversation before it could be used effectively.
The HMIS initiative is part of a broader municipal effort to place more civic and health-related services online. The other areas identified by the administration include the processing of birth and death certificates, public complaint handling and human-resource recruitment. The information released on Wednesday did not specify a timeline for extending HMIS to every BMC hospital or provide details about the system’s total cost.
For patients using Sion Hospital’s outpatient department, the immediate changes are expected to centre on digital registration records and payment options. Further expansion of the system, including the proposed artificial intelligence tools, will depend on the outcome of the pilot and the administration’s response to the operational and technical issues identified during implementation.
