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FYP Final Report v1.0.0
Copyright and All Rights Reserved To: Pee-Lo Team @2003/04
11
2.0 Introduction
2.1 Current Health Services in Malaysia
Malaysia is compromised of thirteen states and two federal states. In each states, there are
numerous health institutions; both private and government funded. In each village, town and city,
there are a more than a handful of clinics and polyclinics.
In Malaysia, and as well as in many other (if not all) health institutions around the world, they have
their own record keeping system. Patient records are not shared. A clear example will be say Mr.
A visits Hospital X for a medical check up and is diagnosed of having a bad digestive disorder. He
has to do a lot of follow ups with the doctors in that hospital for a few months until his health
condition is at a more stable situation. He is then ‘discharged’ from having going to Hospital X for
routine check up. Along the years, he switches jobs and he is not in another state (say Malacca.
He visited Hospital X in Kedah when he worked there). His digestive disorder strikes again after 10
years of ‘cool down’ and he is now in Malacca. The situation is a lot worse compared to the
previous one. He is admitted to the hospital (say Hospital Y) and the hospital has to phone to
Hospital X in Kedah to have his medical records being faxed over.
This situation is, by the dawn of the 21st Century is rather old fashioned. Even though it is might be
economical, it is not the most efficient. Hospital X has to search their database for the information,
print it out and fax it. If the hospital is a little more advanced, then perhaps they save it in a
database and they just have to email the information to Hospital Y (that requires doctors in Hospital
Y has constant access to computers).
If we were to say using an electronic database to store patient records, then we are talking about
the initiative of the hospital to keep up with the current IT technology to help in its management.
The question will be, to what extend the current IT technology is being applied to the health sector?
Emails and electronic databases have been in existence for long enough; a product of the early
days of Internet and that is about 10 years ago. In 10 years, IT Technology and computer science
has evolved into a more sophisticated state. Telecommunication and electronic gadgets have also
follow suit closely where in most cases, each of these field and invention form a symbiosis among
themselves to propel themselves steadily down the technology tree. Hence, health sector can
definitely benefit a lot from this.
But the problem with health sector now (in this country) is that it is still very backward. Upgrades
are visible but not rampant. The government has proposed e-medicine a few years back during
the launch of Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC) but it does not seem to have much significantly
huge change among the health institutes around the country. Computerization of health institution
is still rather slow and the crawl is getting even more mundane if we are to compare to the
computerization of commercial sectors in this country.
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