Dean Koh

Initial results from a trial of the SRA in Northern NSW has shown significant improvements in communications between healthcare providers.

“Everyone is working towards the same target, even though no one talked about it,” said Professor Tomohiro Kuroda, CIO, Kyoto University Hospital (KUHP), Japan.

The hope is that the research will lead to a toolkit of measures and resources for health professionals, tailored for the Australian context, and suitable for national use.

In the fourth episode of the HIMSS APAC Digital Dialogue Series hosted by Dr Charles Alessi, HIMSS Chief Clinical Officer, guest speakers Professor Dr Tunku Kamarul Zaman bin Tunku Zainol Abidin, Director, University Malaya Medical Center (UMMC) and Dr Fazilah Shaik Allaudin, Senior Deputy Director, Medical Development Division, Ministry of Health (MOH) Malaysia spoke their respective organizations’ approach to containing the outbreak and discussed COVID-19’s impact on telehealth in Malaysia. UMMC and MOH’s approaches to containing the pandemic In terms of dealing with challenges and uncertainties caused by COVID-19, UMMC utilized integrated information systems to: Track and manage crucial supplies such as Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) Manage healthcare workers and tracing their movements to minimize risk Optimize patient care and ensure that relevant information is delivered effectively Maintain surveillance of disease clusters and tracking treatment plans of patients An important consideration that Professor Dr Tunku Kamarul Zaman mentioned was the psychological impact of COVID-19 on healthcare workers, which was brought up to him via his virtual meetings and interactions from their collaborators in China, such as Shanghai Jiao Tong University. From the MOH’s perspective, one of the tools used in the multi-agency effort against the pandemic was the introduction of the MySejahtera app which was developed by the Malaysian government to assist in monitoring of COVID-19 outbreak in the country, Dr Fazilah explained. Some of the features of the app include COVID-19 health guidelines, information on the nearest health facilities and a COVID-19 hotspot tracker. MySejahtera is linked to the MyTrace app, developed by Malaysia’s Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation (MOSTI) which enables the identification of those who have been in close proximity to an infected person using Bluetooth technology.  Malaysia’s 1997 Telemedicine Act The Telemedicine Act 1997 is a Malaysian law that was enacted to provide for the regulation and control of the practice of telemedicine and for matters connected therewith. Addressing a participant’s question on how telehealth is being managed during the COVID-19 pandemic in the country, Professor Dr Tunku Kamarul Zaman clarified that telemedicine is very specific as it involves consultation, which has not happened yet. What has been done at UMMC is helping patients retrieve results online and arranging for home delivery of medicine for patients. “With ‘true’ telemedicine that involves consultation and drugs prescription, we’ve been very careful with that as there are quite a number of regulatory issues we have to overcome and we having a six sessions’ debate on that within the university, looking at the fine print. In fact, the Telemedicine Act of 1997 has not been revised to today’s standards. In terms of telehealth, we started a few things but it is not the ‘pure’ telemedicine model,” Professor Dr Tunku Kamarul Zaman said. Dr Fazilah added that the Telemedicine Act was more of a provider-to-provider kind of consultation, which needs to be revised and it was never really enforced. “We’re starting some work to look at the regulation of online health services but COVID-19 came and everything was accelerated. Right now, we’re following the Malaysian Medical Council (MMC)’s advisory, at least for the COVID-19 situation and they have put guidelines for virtual consultation with certain SOPs in place. For now, the MMC’s virtual consultation guidelines are enough but moving on post-pandemic, we really have to revise our Telemedicine Act and think about whether we are going to have new regulations or policies.” “In terms of new policies for telemedicine and teleconsultations, I think the work has already started,” she concluded.  Click here to register for the next episode of the HIMSS APAC Digital Dialogue Series.

Over a six-week period in April and May this year, Bendigo Health in regional Victoria conducted roughly 2700 telehealth outpatient appointments across the Loddon Mallee region. Compared to a year prior to the six-week period, only 187 telehealth appointments were conducted. The departments that contributed to this huge increase include Oncology (1010 appointments), Child and Acute Mental Health Services (352 appointments), Outpatient Rehabilitation (220 appointments), Speech Pathology (103 appointments) and Midwife Services (78 appointments). As such, Bendigo Health plans to re-evaluate the role of telehealth in its model of care after a huge uptake in the service during the COVID-19 pandemic. It also recently surveyed the telehealth experience of 41 oncology patients and 76% indicated they would like telehealth to be an ongoing option for certain appointments. THE LARGER TREND Given the surge in the popularity of telehealth in handling the COVID-19 pandemic, healthcare providers are considering to integrate more of these services in the near future. For example at Singapore’s Tan Tock Seng Hospital, video-consultation sessions starting with the hospital’s psychiatry unit have been implemented to ensure that patients get their care remotely, Healthcare IT News reported. Bendigo Health also rolled out a cloud-based remote monitoring system for suspected COVID-19 patients, which supplies doctors and nurses with a dashboard of daily updated symptoms and health vitals to remotely stay on top of their patients’ health. ON THE RECORD “In the future we do believe there’s a number of appointments that can and should be done virtually for patient conveniences and the efficiency of our service,” said Peter Faulkner, Chief Executive of Bendigo Health.  

Lunit INSIGHT MMG was first introduced at the 2018 RSNA annual meeting.

“There is a lot of discussion within the government to allow telehealth services in South Korea. It is one of the ‘new normal’ after COVID-19,” said Dr Hwang Hee, CIO, SNUBH.

This follows the recent launch of the NZ COVID Tracer app. 

Technologies adopted to tackle the COVID-19 situation at TTSH included the Staff Surveillance System (S3), Command, Control and Communications (C3) system and a real time location system (RTLS).

The use of DXC Care Suite will increase and improve the flow of patients through the hospitals, freeing up capacity and creating administrative efficiencies.