Health project is ‘very encouraging’

SEREMBAN: A pilot project at a public health clinic to enable doctors electronic access to patients’ records is proving to be a positive undertaking.

“At present, doctors still have to ask a patient about his medical record and ailment whenever he comes in for treatment,” Health Minister Datuk Seri Dr Dzulkefly Ahmad said.

But under the Teleprimary Care-Oral Health Clinical Information System (TPC-OHCIS), he said the doctor or dentist would be able to access the records of the patient in a digitised form from a cloud computing system.

“The doctors and dentists will be able to access these records straight away from any of the 3,300 government health and dental clinics,” he said.

Once TPC-OHCIS was implemented nationwide, government health facilities would be able to improve patient care, he said after being briefed on the pilot project at the Sikamat health and dental clinics here.

Dr Dzulkefly said the pilot project carried out at the clinic since June last year has been “very encouraging” as both doctors and dentists were able to electronically access their patients’ records.

Despite it being a cloud system, Dr Dzulkefly said the confidentiality of the medical records would be protected and only authorised medical personnel could view them.

He said apart from the Sikamat health and dental clinics, the others involved in the pilot project in Negri Sembilan were Seremban, Seremban 2, Senawang, Ampangan, Mantin and the Za’aba Dental Specialist Clinic.

The Science, Technology and Innovation Ministry awarded a RM30.9mil grant for the project.

Dr Dzulkefly, however, said the decision to expand the TPC-OHCIS nationwide would depend on the government’s financial standing.