Selayang Hospital's 'Rolls Royce' of EMR to be rejuvenated, says Dr Dzul

KUALA LUMPUR: The Health Ministry is working towards rejuvenating the Selayang Hospital’s flagship electronic medical records system (EMR) and is aiming to make it an example of digitalised health records implemented at hospitals.

It was previously reported that the first paperless hospital system in the country has since deteriorated, causing the hospital to go manual.

Health Minister Datuk Seri Dr Dzulkefly Ahmad said the Cerner system, once deemed as the “Rolls Royce” of EMR, was no longer functioning.

“We want to make this (the rejuvenated system) an example of how we can implement (the EMR) at hospitals,” he told the Dewan Rakyat during question time on Tuesday (March 26).

“We will prove our capability to implement an end-to-end EMR, and we can do it again at the Selayang Hospital,” he said.

Dzulkefly said that although the EMR system may require a large amount of money to implement, it may not cost billions of ringgit.

To illustrate his point, he said the EMR was implemented at 50 health clinics on a small scale at a subscription cost of around RM19,300 a month.

Dzulkefly said the ministry is also taking several approaches, including reassessing weaknesses and leveraging the latest technology to drive the EMR initiative.

“The ministry is targeting a four- to five-year timeframe to implement the digital health transformation with the one individual, one record strategy by rolling out EMR at all healthcare facilities nationwide,” he said.

He also said that the measures taken to achieve this include the formation of the Digital Health division.

Dzulkefly added that studies are being carried out to map out the country’s digital healthcare architecture.

Transforming digital healthcare at government and private health facilities to increase accessibility, security and efficiency in the delivery of healthcare is also another target of the ministry, he said.

“The Health Ministry will make a major effort to implement this initiative in phases,” he said.