KUALA LUMPUR, March 17 – Hospital Kuala Lumpur (HKL), one of the country’s largest and busiest hospitals, processes up to 16,000 medical records manually per day.
The records are stored at a building near HKL’s maternity hospital, nicknamed “Wisma Kayu” for its wooden infrastructure, said Dr Rohana Johan, director of HKL.
“At HKL, on any given day, we can see nearly 16,000 manual patient records in motion. That is why, as a director, before I retire, I want this hospital to be digitised – if not entirely, at least half of it – so that we no longer need to manually carry patient records. This (Wisma Kayu) is the place where we store these records,” Dr Rohana said in her briefing to Health Minister Dr Zaliha Mustafa who visited HKL for the first time in an official capacity today.
Dr Zaliha, who previously served at HKL as a medical doctor, said: “If we can digitise these records, it would be a tremendous help. So, God willing, we will also allocate special funds for digitisation at HKL.”
Dr Rohana also shared that HKL employs a total of 12,000 staff, of which 10,000 are permanent and 2,000 are on contract. “But even so, it is barely enough for a hospital of this size,” she added.
It was also mentioned that HKL’s emergency department is undergoing upgrades and is currently operating at half its capacity.
The health minister has announced that an allocation of RM1 million will be approved for the acquisition of assets at HKL.
