Hospital using alternate data server

KUALA LUMPUR: An alternative data server has been set up for Hospital Sungai Buloh after its IT system collapsed on Jan 17, says Health Ministry secretary-general Datuk Seri Dr Chen Chaw Min.

He maintained that the breakdown had not affect the handling of Covid-19 (novel coronavirus) cases.

Pending the acquisition of a new system, he said the hospital, which is the National Referral Centre for Infectious Diseases, was still using the same system but with an alternative server with better specifications to keep all operations running.

“Data migration and database fine-tuning configuration was done to ensure the Hospital Information System (THIS) was up and running on Feb 2.

“The handling of Covid-19 cases was not affected as Hospital Sungai Buloh has a business continuity plan in place if there’s any ICT system breakdown and hospital staff members are aware of the manual workflow needed if an issue arises, ” he said in response to The Star’s question on whether the breakdown of THIS affected its handling of Covid-19 cases.

Asked if there are plans to change to a new operating system, Chen said the ministry was awaiting the approval of funds from the Finance Ministry.

On Jan 22, The Star reported that the server crashed since Jan 17 resulted in difficulties in accessing patients’ records including investigation results, X-rays, MRIs and CT scans, making patient management very difficult.

A source said the main server at the hospital had been out of order for some time and the entire hospital was running on backup servers before these also collapsed.

The source added that the system was bogged down by limited storage as it was running on Windows XP, an operating system no longer supported by Microsoft since April 8,2014.

On the current arrangement, Chen said there was initially a communication error during attempts to rectify hardware issues between the storage and old server.