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Anonymous
12 Feb 2009 11:49 PM
4 Mar 2009 7:46 PM
Great write up Peter! Having seen first hand how public hospitals function in Asia, I can truly relate to your experience in Thailand.
Public hospitals are in dire need of HIS systems, but they are also the most resilient to change because they do not have compete with the private sector. Unfortunately their performance is rated on the daily turnover volume of patients than the quality of care they provide.
Adam
9 Mar 2009 9:10 AM
The potential for effective adoption of healthcare informatics is definitely huge in the Asia region but with the huge disparately in levels of adoption in Asian countries (and even within the countries themselves), it is sometimes difficult to ensure 'optimal utilization ' of the technologies available (e.g. the lack of high speed internet can cripple lofty plans of national wide solutions of the different 'olgies').
With the economic downturn, perhaps Microsoft can join in the crusade of ‘empowering’ potential adopters of healthcare informatics with knowledge in this area? While there are a lot of materials available off the Internet, it takes more than reading a whitepaper to understand how technology can fit in to solve workflow related problems and/or increase clinical efficiency (reduce turnaround times).
Taking the example on the ‘’queuing syndrome’ you witness at the public hospital in Thailand, it makes perfect sense to us on the opportunities for effective technology adoption but to the hospital management, the obvious may not be visible simply due to the lack of awareness on what is possible on current technology (or simply the lack of vision on the greater aspects of things).
Microsoft as an organization would definitely have a bigger voice and influence on how healthcare can adopt technology to improve patient care.
Regards
Adam Chee