KUALA LUMPUR, Sept 13 – The Ministry of Health’s (MOH) clinic appointment booking mobile application has among the poorest ratings of all government apps, Bangi MP Ong Kian Ming said.
The DAP lawmaker noted that MOH’s Sistem Janji Temu Klinik KKM app – which is meant to enable users to book online appointments at public health clinics – has a rating of 1.2 out of the highest score of 5 stars.
According to the Malaysian Administrative Modernisation and Management Planning Unit’s (Mampu) Gamma website that lists all government mobile apps, the Sistem Janji Temu Klinik KKM app has been downloaded 364,015 times, at the time of writing.
“There are some apps with very poor ratings which should be discarded and replaced with existing options which are already available in the marketplace,” Ong said in a statement yesterday.
“For example, the ‘Sistem Janji Temu Klinik KKM’, which has been downloaded more than 100,000 times, has one of the poorest ratings among all of the apps listed in the Gamma.my website: 1.2 out of 5 (with more than 1,000 reviews). This kind of appointment booking app can easily be replicated using models which already work in the private health care system.”
Ong’s statement was accompanied by a screenshot of three one-star reviews complaining that MOH’s Sistem Janji Temu Klinik KKM app was very inconvenient and not user-friendly.
One user named Nurul Syaza Izzati Md Daut complained last May 29 that she couldn’t reschedule her appointment, forcing her to re-book, besides not being able to choose the type of treatment she wanted.
Another user, Fitri Muhamad, complained last February 16 that the registration process on the app was “very time consuming”, adding that the list of Klinik Kesihatan on the app was “overwhelmingly incomplete”.
“Very time-wasting and burdening. Patient probably would’ve died first just to figure this apps [sic] out,” said Fitri.
A third user, Choi Je Sun, said in his review dated last June 18 that the Sistem Janji Temu Klinik KKM app was a “waste of time, always stuck somewhere, and so complicated for a simple booking”.
In his review of government apps listed on Mampu’s Gamma site, Ong urged the government to ensure data protection and privacy, citing the controversial MySejahtera app that was initially created as a Covid-19 contact tracing app, before the launch of new features like organ donation pledges, health screening and childhood immunisation records.
“Data privacy is very important to ensure the users that their personal data that is stored on an app will not be misused or hacked or sold to a third party,” said the former international trade and industry deputy minister.
“This is the challenge faced by MySejahtera when it was discovered that the developer may be able to use the data collected for private and commercial purposes. This is a lost opportunity as MySejahtera can be used by the Ministry of Health for many health-related projects for long-term health tracking of the population, e.g. tracking those with possible Long Covid symptoms.”
Despite being touted as a health app, MySejahtera only allows users to input their weight as a single undated entry, thus preventing users from monitoring their weight trend over time, unlike Apple’s Health app (free for iPhone users) that allows users to regularly enter their weight on a specific date and time, showing one’s weekly, monthly, six-monthly, and yearly average weight.
CodeBlue reported earlier today that the troubled MySJ Sdn Bhd – the private company managing the MySejahtera app that is currently embroiled in two lawsuits filed by shareholders – is losing its investor, Hasrat Budi Sdn Bhd that is a wholly-owned subsidiary of property developer EcoWorld.
Eco World Development Group Berhad said in a July 28 filing with Bursa Malaysia that a consent judgment was entered that day for MySejahtera developer Entomo Malaysia Sdn Bhd and Entomo CEO Raveenderen Ramamoothie, who is also a MySJ director, to buy back Hasrat Budi’s entire 10 per cent stake in MySJ for RM24 million, plus interest at the rate of 10 per cent per annum, within three months by end October.
