KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 13 — The Digital Ministry’s National Digital Department (JDN) has opened an RM87.45 million tender for maintenance and operation of the MySejahtera health mobile application for three years.
The MySejahtera open tender was advertised on the government’s ePerolehan portal last January 2, with the tender to be closed on February 23.
JDN’s tender for the MySejahtera project owned by the Ministry of Health (MOH) is open to local companies, as well as foreign companies from countries that Malaysia has free trade agreements (FTAs) with.
“Tenderers must ensure that their company meets the eligibility criteria for participation in the advertised procurement, including whether the procurement is subject to an FTA when submitting a bid. Bids from tenderers from FTA countries participating in procurements that are not subject to an FTA will not be considered,” said JDN in its 320-page tender document uploaded onto the ePerolehan site.
Bids were invited from companies registered with the Ministry of Finance (MOF) under field codes related to software, telecommunications, data management, and security: 210103, 210104, 210105, 210106, and 210107.
JDN’s indicative value of the tender is RM87,451,866.63, excluding 8 per cent service tax. Prices offered by bidders are also subject to Margin of Preference (MOP) for local companies or companies from FTA member countries.
MOP means that if a bidding company’s bidding offer exceeds the indicative price of the tender, but stays within a certain percentage of threshold, then that company will be given the margin of price differential.
MySejahtera Cost Structure Estimated At RM94m Over Three Years
Although the MySejahtera tender value is stated as RM87.5 million, JDN’s tender document estimated an RM94.4 million cost structure for the app over 36 months.
These include corrective maintenance (RM26.5 million), technical operation support and helpdesk (RM15.6 million), cloud service provider subscription (RM15.4 million), and preventive maintenance (RM15 million), among others.
Besides Covid-19 features during the pandemic, the MySejahtera app currently has an appointments feature for users to make appointments with health and dental clinics under the MOH, such as for outpatient treatment, health screenings, family planning, quit-smoking services, and minor procedures.
The app also stores one’s organ donation pledge and blood donor card, besides features for health records like health screenings, lab tests, and vaccinations. One’s weight can be self-inputted into MySejahtera, but the app doesn’t document when one’s weight was inputted, preventing a user from seeing their trend of weight gain or loss over time.
MySejahtera currently has an infectious disease tracker that enables users to look at the number of dengue; rabies; Covid-19; hand, foot and mouth disease; tuberculosis; and measles within their vicinity.
The scope of JDN’s MySejahtera tender, however, seeks to develop various new modules and features.
Modules For Patients
The proposed Health Records module includes a health information summary, health reports collection, international patient summary, vaccination, lab results, referrals, and care plans.
Functions include display of health records of the user and dependents; patient’s clinical data during consultation at a health care facility; dental health records; allergies to drugs, food, and allergic reactions; health records for international use; digital vaccination and immunisation records in the form of PDF and QR code; lab test results; downloads and sharing of user’s health records; referrals to health care facilities; and care plans for patients and close contacts according to disease.
Other functions include appointment cards, declaration of close contacts according to disease, declaration of travel history for infectious disease, besides health information and FAQs for infectious diseases.
MOH health care facilities do not routinely provide medical reports to patients after a visit, as such documents need to be requested via a written application. CodeBlue previously reported that a patient’s medical record (Rekod Perubatan Pesakit) is considered “government property”.
Another proposed module is a Personal Health Tracker, comprising vitals, contributions, and government medical benefits. Functions include health trends for the user and dependents, notifications of disturbing health parameters, and display of information on government medical benefits.
The proposed Self-Assessments and Reporting module includes home assessment tools, lifestyle, diabetes, mental, and AEFI (adverse events following immunisation). Functions include a user’s self-evaluation of their health, real-time reporting of self-tests for Covid-19 or other infectious diseases, home surveillance orders, anonymous evaluation of HIV risk via MOH’s Testnow site, self-evaluation of mental health, reporting of side effects from tuberculosis drugs for TB-positive individuals, and reporting of AEFI.
The proposed On-Demand Services module includes an infectious disease tracker, locate health facilities, KKMNow, Helpdesk, traveller, and QR scan.
The proposed Appointments module includes appointment booking, walk-in, and appointment history. Functions include booking appointments for in-person or virtual services by health and dental clinics, digital appointment cards, scanning QR codes for entry to health care facilities, a reminder sent 24 hours before one’s appointment, and history of appointments.
The proposed Broadcast and Communications module include untargeted content management, targeted communications, outbound, and campaign banner. Functions include general infographics and video on current health information, targeted health information to users, FAQs, and health parameters and trends.
The proposed Health Cards module includes blood donor, stem cells, Hajj eligibility, and organ donor pledge, with digital cards.
Modules For Health Care Providers
The MySejahtera app project includes modules for health care providers, like patient administration, facility administration, patient health records, clinical decision support, virtual care, care planning and scheduling services, and provider communication.
These include patients’ medical profiles like medical history, including diagnosis, history of treatment, medications; managing health care services at facilities; as well as facility patient records like clinical data during consultation.
MySejahtera also aims to capture other clinical data like medical reports at hospitals; lab and radiology reports, and photos; consultation notes for patients; child and adult immunisation records (date, vaccine type, dose, and route of administration); as well as erasing consultation records if needed by stating the reason for erasure.
Interestingly, the app is also meant to generate and send reports in real time to users via email, raising questions on why this is necessary if a user or patient’s medical records are supposed to be made available on MySejahtera.
Under the proposed Clinical Decision Support module, MySejahtera is aimed at displaying personal care plans and even supporting artificial intelligence or machine learning that can provide clinical decision support, such as tracking disease, that will be the basis for operational processes like increasing efficiency in clinic management.
The Virtual Care module aims to enable appointments for virtual consultations at a clinician’s own facility or another facility, besides uploading media like images, graphics, lab reports, documents, and multimedia files onto a patient record.
The Care Planning and Scheduling Services module includes appointment management and scheduling for patients at public health clinics (Klinik Kesihatan) and dental clinics.
The appointments function is currently available on MySejahtera, but is widely unpopular among the public. On New Year’s Day, the MOH dismissed as fake a message that claimed no walk-ins to public health clinics would be entertained from this month and that appointments must be made via MySejahtera.
However, many people commenting on MOH’s Facebook post insisted that staff on the ground at Klinik Kesihatans and government dental clinics had turned them away and told them to make appointments on the app. Similar comments were posted in response to another MOH post on January 2 that said although appointments are “encouraged”, walk-ins are accepted.
According to JDN’s MySejahtera tender document, the app also aims to allow third-party application onboarding for third parties to access MySejahtera data and services.
It’s unclear how the ambitious proposed expansion of MySejahtera can be realised when medical records in MOH hospitals and clinics are still mostly in paper form, even if management of patient visits to certain clinics has been digitised.
RM87m Tender For Three-Year Maintenance After RM196m Ceiling Price For Earlier Operations
JDN’s tender document described MOH as the “owner” of the MySejahtera application. According to a template agreement, MOH will be representing the government.
,The RM87 million tender for three-year maintenance of the app was opened after then-Deputy Health Minister Lukanisman Awang Sauni said in February 2023 that the government paid MySJ Sdn Bhd based on a ceiling price of RM196 million for MySejahtera.
Lukanisman had said the government intends to turn MySejahtera into a “super app”.
The government’s earlier payment to MySJ was made for two years of operations of MySejahtera from April 2021 to March 2023. It’s unclear whether any company has been managing the app since then.
The MOH also did not say if MySJ, which developed the app during the Covid-19 pandemic, had destroyed any copies of personal data of millions of Malaysians from its possession – including MyKad numbers and phone numbers or email addresses, as well as medical information – following the end of its contract.
It’s unclear if the budget for the RM87 million tender will come from the Digital Ministry or MOH as the project owner, although CodeBlue understands that allocations are usually taken from the ministry that tenders the project.
On average, RM87 million over three years works out to RM29 million a year.
RM29 million exceeds the MOH’s 2026 allocation for neurology (RM23 million), as well as the RM22 million allocation for the National Centre of Excellence for Mental Health (NCEMH).
If the government paid the maximum RM196 million for the first two years of MySejahtera operation and the contract for another three years of maintenance ends up to be RM87 million, as per JDN’s tender value, this amounts to a whopping RM283 million for a mobile app for five years, about double the cost of construction of a district hospital like Rembau Hospital.
