HCM City (VNS/VNA) – Ho Chi Minh City should invest in digitalinnovation and transformation in the healthcare sector to improve servicequality by “making healthcare delivery more efficient and more accessible,”experts have said.

Digital innovations such as blockchain, cloud-based computing, virtual health,artificial intelligence and robotics, digital reality, and the Internet ofMedical Things are key to improving healthcare services, according to aDeloitte Global report titled 2019 Global Healthcare Outlook: Shaping theFuture.

The report, released recently, said digital technologies could help solvetoday’s problems and build a sustainable foundation for affordable, accessible,high-quality healthcare.

Global healthcare spending is expected to rise at an annual rate of 5.4 percentin 2018-22, a surge from 2.9 percent in the previous five years, it said.

“Ageing and growing populations, greater prevalence of chronic diseases, andexponential advances in innovative, but costly, digital technologies continueto grow healthcare demand and expenditures.”

But adopting many of these innovations requires capabilities that fall beyondthe traditional purview of healthcare organisations.

It is vital to build eco-systems that embrace non-traditional players andsources of knowledge outside their own four walls, experts said.

Recently HCM City has invested extensively in smart healthcare development, focusingon a healthcare big data platform and the use of IT in hospital management andexpertise management.

Tang Chi Tuong, deputy director of the city Department of Health, saidhospitals are required to create electronic medical records of internationalstandard for patients.

Each citizen would have a single national patient identifier, he told aworkshop on smart healthcare in the city recently.

The Thu Duc District Hospital was the first medical centre in the city to getapproval from the Ministry of Health to create electronic medical records, hesaid.

“Many hospitals are set to follow suit.”

Since 2016, the department has been calling for the use of IT in hospitaladministration.

A lot of specialised software has been developed for managing medical workers,patient health records, drugs and pharmaceuticals, and health warehouses.

Many hospitals have adopted artificial intelligence to enhance their treatmentquality, including robot-assisted surgery by Binh Dan Hospital and 115 People'sHospital.

Experts said in a smart hospital the software is fully inter-connected toactively support technical and professional activities and improve medicalexamination and treatment and hospital management.

The city recently set up the Medical Operations Centre under the Department ofHealth to use artificial intelligence for both operation and management.

The centre aims to spot diseases and epidemics at an early stage, and connectmedical experts in Vietnam and abroad.

It also aims to improve medical services quality across the city by lettingpatients choose the service and doctor from home.

Nguyen Tan Binh, head of the city Department of Health, said the smart healthoperation centre would connect and gather data from relevant agencies,hospitals and other health facilities, and enable analysis, forecast andsurveillance of diseases.

It would also help hospitals and health facilities improve their quality, headded.

The centre will link up with doctors at hospitals throughout the countrybesides more than 100 hospitals in 12 other countries to help improve thequality of Vietnamese doctors.

It will also integrate systems for patient satisfaction surveys, analyses oftraditional and social media, connecting with the 115 emergency centre, andtelemedicine.

It will help make warnings and find solutions to aid the public against thecoronavirus epidemic.

It will instantly update and display occupancy rates at the city’s 47hospitals, show the addresses of people who have contracted the new coronavirusand report on the number of confirmed and suspected coronavirus cases in thecountry and globally.

The city has installed cameras at 48 hospitals and connected them with thecentre for health department officials to monitor emergency aid rooms. Morewill be installed in future.

Speaking at a recent meeting, Nguyen Thien Nhan, secretary of the city PartyCommittee, said on top of its own 13 million residents, the city also receiveslots of patients from other cities and provinces, causing a serious overload onits hospitals.

There is great pressure on healthcare due to the fact its population isincreasing by more than 180,000 a year, he said.

The city needs to invest in human resources and infrastructure and make thebest of IT to improve its healthcare services, he said. 

A number of other countries around the world are also facing the problem ofcost pressures on the health sector due to the increasing life expectancy ofpeople and rising costs of medical examination and treatment, he noted.

Experts said there is plenty of opportunities to improve the healthcare sector,but concerted efforts from multiple stakeholders are needed to turn it intoreality./.