Materia Medica Malaysiana

Ministry To Restructure Telehealth

TELUK INTAN, Dec 19 (Bernama) -- The Health Ministry will restructure its Telehealth programme as the initial project has failed to produce satisfactory results due to several problems, said Health Minister Datuk Dr Chua Soi Lek.
He said Telehealth had several advantages in providing good medical services particularly for consultation and education as Malaysia was facing a shortage of doctors especially specialists.
"The initial project was too ambitious as it planned to link all the hospitals and polyclinics in the country. Now, the government has agreed for the project to be in stages and has approved RM60 million for that," he told reporters after visiting the Teluk Intan Hospital, here Sunday.
He said to ensure the project's effectiveness, it would be implemented at selected hospitals or polyclinics which had the needed facilities and they would also identify suitable disciplines for the project.
"Not all disciplines are suitable for Telehealth. We have identified four important components namely teleconsultation, continuous professional development, mass health educational programmes and personalized health record. We scaled it down only to these four components," he said.
Dr Chua said before the project was temporarily stopped, the hospitals had been equipped with computers and facilities but nobody wanted to use them.
"With this Telehealth, many things such as medical consultation and education can be done from a distance and there is no need to send specialists to any particular area.
"With this, there is a link between district hospitals and clinics to the state hospitals. Patients do not need to be transferred to state hospitals.
"It's good for the patient's safety and also in terms of cost. Besides that, doctors at district hospitals will get the support from specialists. However, there can be problems if some people do not want to use ICT (information and communications technology)," he said.