Doctors at Binh Dan Hospital in HCM City’s District 3 use robots to assist in surgeries (Photo courtesy of the hospital)HCM City (VNS/VNA) – ’s Department of Health has sped up
the process of building a database and adopting IT as instructed by the municipal
Party Committee.
They were
required as part of the smart city project, work on which began more than 18
months ago.
Nguyen
Thien Nhan, Secretary of the municipal Party Committee, at a meeting held to
review the project progress in June, had instructed departments including
health to publish what they would need and do in the third quarter so that
companies in relevant fields such as IT could take part in bids for the work.
Assoc
Prof Dr Tang Chi Thuong, the department’s deputy head, said: “We need to do
many things to usher in smart health.”
Smart
health, which the department is developing, aims to serve the public better and
make the use of healthcare services and sending feedback to the department
convenient, according to Thuong.
It also
aims to improve how doctors access the latest professional knowledge and
technologies to reduce medical errors.
It seeks
to streamline administrative procedures at hospitals and the department.
The
department has to create its own database and connect it with the city’s to
create a foundation for a smart city.
Health facilities in the city had to create IT infrastructures, he said, adding that
while many were diligent others were not, leading to inconsistency.
This year
the department would digitise health records at 24 ward and commune health
stations operating as family medicine clinics if approved by the Department of
Information and Communication, he said.
It was
also developing software for managing information about individuals’ health at
the 24 health stations, he said.
It had
set up an IT system for telemedicine linking them and city-level hospitals to
improve the quality of primary healthcare since March, he said.
It had
collaborated with the HCM City University of Technology for a project to make
electronic health records uniform so that hospitals could exchange the data, he
said.
In 2016,
the department started to operate an electronic portal which individuals and
companies could access to search for information about licences and others.
It has
now incorporated other utilities such as messages and emails to keep track of
the department’s processing of applications.
This year
it has used IT to connect with medicine suppliers and traders in the city and
link with national pharmaceutical database as required under the ministry’s
roadmap.
More than
6,000 suppliers and traders have so far linked with the national database.
A system
to manage the supply and use of drugs at hospitals under the department’s
management will be developed to prevent medicine shortages.
The
department expects the Department of Information and Communication to provide
funds for this year.
The city
has many hospitals under the management of the Ministry of Health and others.
Thuong
said the department had developed software to help hospital administrators
manage better, especially finance, when they get in administrative autonomy.
Moreover,
the department has created many other IT applications for management and
issuing disease outbreak warnings.
Many
hospitals in the city use robots and artificial intelligence for diagnosis and
treatment.
Thu Duc
District Hospital has successfully digitised health records stored in its
warehouse as of 2015. More than 6,000 records have so far been digitised.
This
would help store patients’ records for longer and doctors get easy access to
them for treatment and conducting research, Thuong said.
The
department planned to digitise more hospitals’ records, he added.
The
department had to hire many IT experts and set up an IT board for consultation
and implementation of , he said.
The
country has a major need for personnel who have understanding of both health,
especially hospital healthcare services, and IT, according to the department.
Most
hospitals have a shortage of such medical informatics specialists while the
country’s universities and colleges do not train people in this.
This
shortage is a hurdle to the health sector using IT more efficiently and improving
the efficiency and safety of healthcare services, especially at hospitals.
Many
hospitals have to employ IT engineers who had to acquire expertise in health on
their own.
Some
hospitals have doctors interested in IT and learning it.-VNS/VNA
Source: VietnamPlus
