Ministry of Health representatives check the software used for data management at a health station in Tân Bình District’s 15 Ward in HCM City.  — VNA/VNS Photo Đinh Hằng

HCM CITY — The Ministry of Health has instructed the HCM City Department of Health to use software for information management at health stations in wards and communes.

Hà Anh Đức, chief of the Ministry of Health’s secretariat, said that health stations in wards and communes should complete its data connections with the ministry's information management platform.  

At a meeting with the ministry on November 26, Tăng Chí Thượng, deputy head of the city Department of Health, said that in the past a health station had nearly 80 notebooks to record its activities, which led to inefficient use of time by its medical staff.

Health stations in the city, however, have been applying IT to manage data, but each piece of software can only manage one kind of content. The use of multiple kinds of software has had many shortcomings.

Since 2019, under the ministry’s instruction, the department has piloted the use of software from the Vietnam Posts and Telecommunications Group at 110 health stations in the city.

The health station in Tân Bình District’s Ward 15, for example, now manages more than 300 electronic health records of people in the ward.

Dr Châu Quang Khải, head of the station, said the centre’s operation has become more efficient and convenient since it began using only one software programme.

The station’s staff can more easily find information about patients, and reports about patients are done more rapidly and are now more complete and precise.

The city aims to expand the application of this software to all 319 health stations by 2021, Thượng said.

The city’s goal is to have electronic health records for 90 per cent of its population by 2025. Health stations will manage these records.

According to Thượng, the connection between health stations’ software and the ministry’s platform has been very good.

According to Đức the country has 11,500 health stations in communes, wards, and towns. Of these, 7,300 use the Vietnam Post and Telecommunications Group’s software and 3,300 others use Viettel’s software. Nearly 1,000 use software from other telecom providers.

This software has to be connected to the ministry’s platform. — VNS