Materia Medica Malaysiana

Computerworld Malaysia - Vol. 13 Issue No. 8, 7 July - 10 August 2003 - HKL achieves telemedicine first

HOSPITAL Kuala Lumpur (HKL) celebrated a historic telemedicine first when it announced a successful first year of operations of its Telemedicine Command Controls Centre (TCCC) in the Urology department recently. HKL is the first hospital in the region to install a TCCC on the premises, which utilises info-communications technologies to enable monitoring of the individual operating theatres simultaneously and separately, and conferencing between doctors and these theatres. Provided by local healthcare sector technology provider Intuitive Controls this system also offers the setting for an interactive classroom. It has been up and running since August 2002 after an initial planning and implementation period of about three years.
Malaysia today is facing an acute lack of trained medical experts and medical service providers. The medical industry, until recently, was facing a brain drain from the government sector to private or other international options. In Malaysia currently, the general hospitals and universities have been the main centres that are responsible for training specialists.

"As such, telemedicine presents a real opportunity to address this fundamental issue by enabling training to be conducted in-house and more frequently for specialists on a wider scale," stressed Prem Kumar, managing director of Intuitive Controls. "In addition, the cost savings in training these doctors is very attractive as the training is conducted on the job."

Prem added that telemedicine relies on the ability to administer medical care over different locations as well as to transfer electronic medical data, such as high-resolution images, live video, sound and patient records.

Jason Chung, Intuitive Controls' marketing manager, said that with telemedicine facilities a doctor could, for example, monitor a patient's heart condition remotely and alert the patient to visit a hospital when necessary. In other examples, an ambulance equipped with the latest imaging technology and telecommunications equipment could be turned into a mobile hospital, where information can be sent to a designated hospital prior to the patient's arrival or even have the patient treated in the ambulance itself.

The TCCC at KLH combines tele-monitoring with tele-collaborative systems to enable surgeons and specialists to work together with experts located around the world to conduct operations, training and conferences. This sets the platform for surgeons in the operating theatre to remotely control the endoscope via voice controls, while surgeons based at another location are able to remotely access peripheral devices and key surgical information.

This in turn opens the door for implementation of Robotics Aided Minimal Invasive Surgery, which is commonly used in procedures such as radical prostectomy in urology, appendectomies and cardio vascular procedures. Besides a shorter rehabilitation period, minimal invasive surgery allows for zero infection, less cosmetic damage, shorter hospital stays and lower costs.