KUALA LUMPUR, March 19 – The Health Ministry said today it will implement an electronic medical record system containing sensitive patient information in 145 hospitals in the next three years.
The Star Online reported Health Minister Dzulkefly Ahmad as saying that the system would enable doctors and nurses to share information on patients’ medical consultations and prescriptions.
“Wherever the patients go, the attending doctors will know the patients’ clinical and medical information,” Dzulkefly was quoted telling the press.
“Currently, 20 per cent of the hospitals in the country already have the system in place, including Selayang Hospital and Ampang Hospital, but it is still not fully operational,” Dzulkefly said in a keynote address at Malaysia’s Healthcare Revolution at the Asean Health Care Transformation Summit 2019.
He reportedly told the press that the electronic medical record system would first be integrated between the Health Ministry’s clinics and hospitals.
Malay Mail reported in 2017 doctors’ concerns about the Malaysian Health Data Warehouse (MyHDW), which was reportedly meant to synchronise anonymous medical data from patients in public and private health facilities, as they cited confidentiality issues and the lack of public consultation.
The electronic medical system that Dzulkefly was talking about today appears to be different from MyHDW, as management of MyHDW said previously that MyHDW was not an electronic medical record.
Dr Md Khadzir Sheikh Ahmad, head of the Health Informatics Centre at the Health Ministry who is managing MyHDW, told Malay Mail earlier this month that MyHDW only collected data on people’s visits to any health care facility, inpatient visits, outpatient visits, visits to daycare unit services, as well as visits to clinical support groups like physiotherapy, speech, or audio.
