Digital health transformation with medical e-records

Such records also allow patient data to be transferred quickly between departments and hospitals, supporting better diagnosis and treatment coordination, avoiding duplicate clinical requests, and reducing waiting times and unnecessary procedures for patients and their families.

For medical examination and treatment facilities, EMRs provide information and clinical data promptly to other healthcare providers, helping to save the cost of maintaining paper archives, supplying data for research, and contributing to publicity and transparency in treatment such as drug costs, consumables, bed fees, or the cost of paraclinical tests.

EMRs give the health sector complete and accurate population data, enabling timely instructions on disease prevention in particular, as well as forecasts and policy planning for protecting, caring for, and improving health, based on practical and scientific evidence.

In health insurance especially, when information on examinations and treatment is clear and transparent, it becomes easier to manage related costs under insurance, while helping to limit the misuse of drugs and tests. Once an EMR is digitally signed, its information can no longer be edited, ensuring the integrity of the data.

So far, 339 out of 1,650 medical treatment facilities have adopted EMRs in place of paper records.

However, some problems remain in applying IT and EMRs, specifically regarding the legal framework and application of policies for digital transformation in healthcare under various decrees and resolutions.

Medical record forms are still inconsistent in terms of professional categories. Regulations and guidelines on IT bidding and digital transformation continue to face many obstacles in implementing EMRs.

In addition, there are currently no regulations on the price of examination and treatment services, the cost structure of IT applications, or the cost of systems for storing and transmitting images without printing film, among others. This creates difficulties in terms of resources. Moreover, regulations on information security and patient data protection for EMRs are not yet ensured in many places.

Infrastructure and IT application are another challenge. Many facilities suffer from degraded and limited infrastructure that needs upgrading. Medical equipment is outdated and cannot digitise data, and network security requirements are not yet being met.

IT personnel are also a problem. There is currently no specialised IT workforce to meet the requirements of EMR deployment and digital transformation. Meanwhile, the application level of staff regarding software and digital processes remains limited.

Funding is another difficulty. The budget for IT, digital transformation, and EMRs has not met demand. The budget of public service units is insufficient, with no specific expenditure item for IT. Medical service costs do not include IT components. Hospitals mainly use their development investment funds for IT applications, affecting other activities, particularly in islands, mountainous areas, and remote regions.

Information security, and the security and privacy of EMRs in particular, are basically regulated in laws and decrees. In the coming period, the Ministry of Health (MoH) will continue reviewing and supplementing relevant regulations to ensure security, privacy, and interoperability among medical facilities.

To improve the connectivity of records among facilities, the MoH has coordinated with the Ministry of Public Security, the Government Office, and local authorities and relevant units to develop and issue legal and guiding documents. The MoH has also issued many documents instructing treatment facilities to deploy EMRs nationwide, and will continue to develop and issue common lists (clinical and paraclinical index sets) for this task.

In May, the government also issued regulations on data management, providing an important legal basis for the MoH to carry out data planning and the development of health sector databases, including EMR data.