KUALA LUMPUR: Patients may soon be able to control what medical information they share across hospitals and clinics beyond government facilities, says the Health Ministry’s Digital Health Department.
Its director Dr Mahesh Appannan said the new functionality within the MySejahtera app is designed to improve patient outcomes by giving doctors full visibility of records, reducing guesswork, avoiding repeated tests, cutting costs, and speeding up consultation, all with patients' consents.
“Testing is currently underway to connect public and private healthcare providers, enabling patient records to be shared seamlessly across both sectors.
“This is because (the feature) can currently only be used among government healthcare facilities,” he said during a forum about Digital Leadership as a Leadership Capability on Friday (June 26).
Dr Mahesh said the department would provide a detailed briefing to the media within the next few months, once the system is ready.
According to him, the system will automatically generate a summary of each clinic visit and send it to patients as a PDF through the MySejahtera app.
"For example, after a consultation at a government clinic, the full visit details will be compiled and sent to the patient.
“When moving to different clinics, patients don't have to answer the same questions at every visit; they can simply share their medical history, allowing doctors to focus on delivering quality care," he added.
Meanwhile, Dr Mahesh encouraged the adoption of digital health as a core skill for all practitioners, noting it is no longer optional in the modern day.
