IIM-L professors brainstorm on ‘oxygen audit’ project

LUCKNOW: A team of professors at the Indian Institute of Management, Lucknow (IIM-L) is currently working on the procedure to be adopted for oxygen audit under which they will track and monitor usage of oxygen in hospitals to ensure optimal utilization.

The team is led by professor Suresh Jakhar with professor Arunabha Mukhopadhyay, Prof Ajay Garg and Prof Kshitij Awasthi as other team members.

The IIM-L professors are busy developing a procedural and monitoring framework for oxygen supply and optimal utilization by hospitals. “Initially we will develop parametres for collecting information from each hospital on daily basis and centralised oxygen unit will monitor it,” said one of the team members.

The team members held quite a few virtual interactions with each other to finalise on how to go about it. The teachers at IIM-L held meetings with larger group of experts drawn from other institutes.

IIM-L is working with UP government, IIT-Kanpur and IIT BHU for oxygen audit in the hospitals of UP.

Prof Archana Shukla, director, IIM-L is part of highpowered group comprising of additional chief secretary home, Awanish Awasthi, director IIT-K, Abhay Karandikar and director IIT BHU Prof PN Jain and medical experts among others. Chief minister Yogi Adityanath announced the oxygen audit a day after launching a digital platform for monitoring oxygen supply system. He asked officials to strike a balance between demand and supply of oxygen. He also asked them to “distribute oxygen in a transparent manner.” Additional chief secretary (Home) Awanish Kumar Awasthi said efforts were on to ensure rational utilisation of oxygen in hospitals.

The health department and the medical education department have issued guidelines for the use of oxygen in Covid-19 pandemic. The state government had also received guidelines for the judicious use of oxygen as a therapy to treat Covid-19 patients, he said.