• Home
• GOVERNMENT CXO
• E-GOVERNMENT
• CITIZEN ENGAGEMENT
• TAX AND REVENUE MANAGEMENT
• GOVERNMENT PROCUREMENT
• GREEN GOVERNMENT
• GOVERNMENT DATA MANAGEMENT
• GOVERNMENT SECURITY
• GOVERNMENT CLOUD
• GOVERNMENT ANALYTICS
• GOVERNMENT GIS
• CONNECTED GOVERNMENT
• DIGITAL INCLUSION
• EDUCATION IT
• HEALTHCARE IT

Healthcare IT

Thailand: successful e-health system lauded

By Alice Kok | 14 May 2009

Thailand’s Bumrungrad International Hospital has digitised as many aspects of hospital work as it can—enabling it to more than double the number of patients it can handle each day, increase safety and cut its patients’ bills.

“It’s made a significant difference,” said Chang Foo, the hospital’s Chief Technology Officer.

Bill payment, human resources, record keeping and inventory are now all done electronically, allowing the hospital’s staff to get more work done. Doctors no longer wait around for patient records, such as X-ray or blood test results, to be delivered by hand. And wasteful duplication has been eliminated because doctors can see what tests have been done already and access results immediately.

Digitisation has also been lauded to improved safety. Bumrungrad has an e-prescription system that helps to eliminate errors from illegible handwriting, and allergy alerts that warn doctors against medications unsuitable for patients and can suggest alternatives based on the symptoms observed.

The most obvious benefit has been in the number of patients Bumrungrad can handle safely in a day. In 1999, the hospital could handle up to 1500 people per day, but now Bumrungrad sees 3000 to 4000 patients a day with no increase in administrative staff or number of wards and rooms.

That increase in efficiency is one that other countries would like to replicate. US and UK, for example, are pushing forward on plans to use information technology to improve healthcare. To increase the uptake of such systems, US has earmarked US$19 billion for spending on health information technology, while the U.K. has set aside US$17.5 billion.

A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine last month found that only 1.5 per cent of US hospitals had a comprehensive electronic health record system, while an additional 7.6 per cent had just a basic system.

Some of the software developers at Global Care Solutions—which worked with Bumrungrad on the e-health system—previously worked on hospital IT systems in the US and Europe, and were able to bring best practices to the effort.

The software maker was also able to troubleshoot issues specific to Bumrungrad by working with doctors and nurses. The resulting single software set for all Bumrungrad departments is a system able to communicate with itself throughout the hospital, and manipulate data in any way the hospital deems useful.

Bumrungrad’s entire system, including backup, includes two database servers and three application servers. Every PC, monitor and printer at the hospital is also from Dell, making it easy for the IT staff to take out and replace broken computers. Around 20 people work for the IT department at Bumrungrad.

Bumrungrad cleared out the room where patient record folders were stored after uploading data to the digital record. In place of the sprawling file cabinets is a children’s clinic able to treat 110,000 children annually in a spacious 300 square-metre area.

---