(Borneo Post; October 27, 2009)

KUCHING: Sarawak General Hospital's (SGH) Cardiac Centre yesterday marked another milestone when it became one of the latest hospitals in Asia to use the myCare2x Open Source Software Hospital Information System.

myCare2x is a software solution based on German industry standards and practices. It provides full Hospital Information System (HIS) functionalities that include all administrative, medical and nursing records.

With the system in place at the Cardiac Centre, it is a step towards having a full-fledged tele-medicine system to administer Sarawak's overall healthcare, said Deputy Chief Minister Datuk Patinggi Tan Sri Dr. George Chan yesterday.

He said tele-medicine would be the way forward for Sarawak given the State's vastness and challenging geography as well as the on-going shortage of medical personnel.

"Sarawak covers a huge area and we can't send doctors all over the State. So we're now improving on our telecommunication services so that we can develop our tele-medicine.

"We can build new hospitals but if there are insufficient doctors (to man them), there's no point", he said when launching the myCare2x HIS at the Cardiac Centre here

Home grown ICT system integrator and solutions provider, SAINS in collaboration with a German company, Healthcare Consulting gmbh, has spent the last few months implementing the myCare2x Open Source Software HIS for SGH's Cardiac Centre.

This software streamlines patient healthcare information, namely, patient administration, patient appointment and test scheduling, test results management and electronic patient file, making information more readily available and allows greater efficiency at the Centre in order to meet the ever increasing workload.

At the press conference later, Dr. Chan who is also SAINS Chairman said the company has implemented HIS on a free-of-charge pilot basis, which, otherwise, would cost quite a substantial amount.

He said the system would make it easy for both doctors and patients as the traditional means of keeping records using hardcopies could get lost amid piles of other paper works.

Earlier, Head of Cardiology Department Professor Dr. Sim Kui-Hian said as the Cardiac Centre gained more popularity globally, HIS came in at the right time to help the Centre right time to help the Centre to cope with its ever increasing workload.

The Centre opened in 2001, and within 5 years, emerged as a Cardiac Centre of excellence with the rich and famous, as well as the poor getting the same treatment while at the same time, training foreign cardiologists, he said.

Dr. Sim, who is also the National Heart Association of Malaysia President, said he had told the Minister of Health Datuk Liow Tiong Lai recently that despite this successful story, the overall healthcare in Sarawak and Sabah was still "underserviced" and hoped to see more improvements under the 1Malaysia concept.

"We look forward to having a second general hospital here specially dedicated to heart and cancer", he pointed out.

Meanwhile, SAINS Chief Executive Officer, Teo Tien Hiong said myCare2x was a matured solutions used in hospitals in Germany.

He said it was also being used in one hospital in the Philippines while two hospitals in Nepal had started to implement the system.

He hope that the pilot project would bring better co-operation between SGH and SAINS in improving health services for the people, particularly for rural communities in the State.

Also present were SGH Deputy Director Dr. Junaidi Diki, ICT Unit of the Chief Minister's Department Director, William Patrick Nyigor and Healthcare Consulting General Manager, Joachim Mollin.