The Hospital Information System was a story about the inside of the hospital\u2014the nervous system of counters, wards, labs, and bills. It was about the patient\u2019s journey from the village to the bedside. But around the same time, a quieter, equally transformative dream was taking shape. We had begun to ask a different question: What should MGIMS look like to the outside world?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the year 2000, the internet was still a novelty in India. In a place like Sevagram, built on Gandhian simplicity and situated miles from the nearest tech hub, the “web” felt almost mythical. Most people here had never sent an email; fewer still had seen a website. The word \u201conline\u201d belonged to Bangalore or Mumbai, not to a rural medical college where the electricity still flickered during the monsoons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Yet, the need was real. Students applying for admission were hungry for information. Alumni scattered across the globe wanted a way to look back at home. Parents wanted exam results without the crushing anxiety of waiting for the post. We needed a public face, but we had no IT department to build one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
***<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n The first bridge was built not by a contractor, but by an alumnus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Dr. Avita Pereira, from the 1990 batch, had moved to Bengaluru after her internship. She and her husband, Dr. Johnson, shared a fascination with technology that was rare for doctors in those days. While most of us saw computers as glorified typewriters, they saw them as tools of connection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n One day, Avita reached out with an offer that felt both generous and improbable: \u201cWe want to build a website for MGIMS.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n There was no contract, no consultancy fee, and no corporate pitch. It was simply an act of gratitude. For months, Avita and Johnson worked on the code and design, trying to translate the lived, messy reality of Sevagram into something that could sit neatly on a screen. It was a difficult task; a hospital is a chaotic, breathing organism, and capturing it in static HTML pages required immense patience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On October 2, 2000\u2014Gandhi Jayanti\u2014the MGIMS website went live. By today\u2019s standards, it would look primitive, perhaps even quaint. But for us, it was a door opening to the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n ***<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n The website\u2019s impact was immediate, and its greatest gift was practical: it killed the anxiety of the entrance exam results.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Until then, the weeks following the exams were a time of torture. Students waited for letters that might get lost; parents travelled long distances just to scan a notice board. The stress spread like a fever through towns and villages. Putting the results online changed that overnight. Suddenly, a student could check their fate from a cyber-caf\u00e9 in Nagpur or a dial-up connection in Delhi.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Within six months, the website recorded nearly 25,000 visitors. That number may seem trivial in the age of viral videos, but for a rural medical college in 2000, it was a stampede. It meant that Sevagram had become searchable. We had created a \u201cVirtual Sevagram,\u201d accessible to people who had never set foot in Wardha.<\/p>\n\n\n\n ***<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n Launching a website is the easy part; sustaining it is the penance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Over time, the original site began to show its age. Technology moved faster than our capacity to update it. Pages became stale, links broke, and new needs emerged\u2014online applications, alumni databases, research archives. We tried several times to revive it. Ashwini, then a medical student, created a preliminary site for the Department of Medicine. We collaborated with his colleagues\u2014Ramashish Bhutada, Nikhilesh Ghushe, and Akhilesh Mritunjai\u2014to patch things up. Ramashish, who later founded Deusco Technologies, exchanged countless emails with me between 2006 and 2010, trying to build a comprehensive portal. We even paid for a system audit in 2007, hoping an expert view would force a leap forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But these initiatives often stalled. The relentless demand of hospital life has a way of swallowing side projects. The website began to feel like a half-built house: the address existed, but the rooms were empty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In November 2008, however, we took a small but crucial step. We purchased the official academic domain from ERNET India: mgims.ac.in. We finally had the right name. Now, we just needed to build the right home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n ***<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n The true revival finally arrived in 2015, and it came from within the family.<\/p>\n\n\n\n By then, Ashwini had grown from a curious student into a professional who understood systems architecture. He decided to rebuild the website from scratch\u2014not as a hobby, but as a serious institutional project. He was joined by my daughter-in-law, Shaily.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Their partnership gave the project its balance. Ashwini brought the structure, the logic, and the technical backbone. Shaily brought the design sense, the content clarity, and the human touch that prevents a website from becoming a cold directory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At home, our conversations shifted. Dinner table talk drifted from clinical cases and ward politics to navigation menus, subdomains, and the eternal question of good design: How does a user find what they need in two clicks?<\/em> They studied medical school websites from Harvard to Johns Hopkins, not to imitate them blindly, but to understand the grammar of elegance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n They settled on a simple philosophy: Information, Design, Simplicity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In February 2015, the new MGIMS website went live. It was clean, functional, and modern. It told the institute\u2019s story without clutter and made essential information accessible without drama. Watching them work was strangely moving for me. It was not just a technical project; it was a continuation of a larger family habit\u2014building systems that reduce friction for others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n ***<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n While the website became our public face, another digital shift was brewing quietly inside the campus\u2014one that would end the tyranny of paper.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In 2008, Ashwini\u2014still an intern\u2014noticed something that the rest of us had accepted as a law of nature: the inefficiency of the paper circular. Notices were printed, pinned, photocopied, distributed, misplaced, ignored, and then rediscovered when it was too late. He realized that Google Apps for Education offered free institutional email services. He applied, verified MGIMS as an educational institute, and secured the license.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It was a masterstroke that saved the institute money, but more importantly, it changed the culture. On October 7, 2009, Ashwini wrote to me, brimming with the impatience of youth:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI am testing the MGIMS intramail on Google apps, and it is working flawlessly! The familiar and simple Gmail UI makes it even better\u2026 Please start the official process of obtaining the leased line as soon as possible (now!).\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n He also pushed for a larger vision, urging us to think beyond just email: \u201cWith 2.0, we must think big\u2026 A system that\u2019s unimaginable and clearly the best internationally.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n I replied instantly, because such enthusiasm is contagious: \u201cFantastic ideas! Go ahead \u2013 I will talk to the KHS management.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n In May 2009, Intramail began rolling out. It started slowly\u2014some faculty were indifferent, others tech-phobic\u2014but once the Medical Superintendent began emailing circulars instead of printing them, the shift became irreversible. A student could now email the Dean. A resident could message a consultant. The campus became lighter, faster, and less wasteful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Today, when I log into an official MGIMS email address, I often remember that intern urging his father to act \u201cnow.\u201d It reminds me that in Sevagram, innovation rarely comes from expensive consultants. It comes from the people who live here, who see the cracks in the wall, and care enough to fix them.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe Bengaluru Bridge<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n
The End of the Waiting Game<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n
The Struggle to Keep it Alive<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n
The Family Project<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n
The Intramail Revolution<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n
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