ASIA News

In 2018 alone, approximately 12,000 audits performed for broad-spectrum antibiotic use at SGH revealed that 20 per cent to 30 per cent of these prescriptions were inappropriate.

Dr Ian Chuang, Chief Medical Officer (CMO), EMEALAAP Health at Elsevier, shares on how hospitals can prepare for a new normal in a post COVID-19 world.

“Everyone is working towards the same target, even though no one talked about it,” said Professor Tomohiro Kuroda, CIO, Kyoto University Hospital (KUHP), Japan.

In the fourth episode of the HIMSS APAC Digital Dialogue Series hosted by Dr Charles Alessi, HIMSS Chief Clinical Officer, guest speakers Professor Dr Tunku Kamarul Zaman bin Tunku Zainol Abidin, Director, University Malaya Medical Center (UMMC) and Dr Fazilah Shaik Allaudin, Senior Deputy Director, Medical Development Division, Ministry of Health (MOH) Malaysia spoke their respective organizations’ approach to containing the outbreak and discussed COVID-19’s impact on telehealth in Malaysia. UMMC and MOH’s approaches to containing the pandemic In terms of dealing with challenges and uncertainties caused by COVID-19, UMMC utilized integrated information systems to: Track and manage crucial supplies such as Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) Manage healthcare workers and tracing their movements to minimize risk Optimize patient care and ensure that relevant information is delivered effectively Maintain surveillance of disease clusters and tracking treatment plans of patients An important consideration that Professor Dr Tunku Kamarul Zaman mentioned was the psychological impact of COVID-19 on healthcare workers, which was brought up to him via his virtual meetings and interactions from their collaborators in China, such as Shanghai Jiao Tong University. From the MOH’s perspective, one of the tools used in the multi-agency effort against the pandemic was the introduction of the MySejahtera app which was developed by the Malaysian government to assist in monitoring of COVID-19 outbreak in the country, Dr Fazilah explained. Some of the features of the app include COVID-19 health guidelines, information on the nearest health facilities and a COVID-19 hotspot tracker. MySejahtera is linked to the MyTrace app, developed by Malaysia’s Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation (MOSTI) which enables the identification of those who have been in close proximity to an infected person using Bluetooth technology.  Malaysia’s 1997 Telemedicine Act The Telemedicine Act 1997 is a Malaysian law that was enacted to provide for the regulation and control of the practice of telemedicine and for matters connected therewith. Addressing a participant’s question on how telehealth is being managed during the COVID-19 pandemic in the country, Professor Dr Tunku Kamarul Zaman clarified that telemedicine is very specific as it involves consultation, which has not happened yet. What has been done at UMMC is helping patients retrieve results online and arranging for home delivery of medicine for patients. “With ‘true’ telemedicine that involves consultation and drugs prescription, we’ve been very careful with that as there are quite a number of regulatory issues we have to overcome and we having a six sessions’ debate on that within the university, looking at the fine print. In fact, the Telemedicine Act of 1997 has not been revised to today’s standards. In terms of telehealth, we started a few things but it is not the ‘pure’ telemedicine model,” Professor Dr Tunku Kamarul Zaman said. Dr Fazilah added that the Telemedicine Act was more of a provider-to-provider kind of consultation, which needs to be revised and it was never really enforced. “We’re starting some work to look at the regulation of online health services but COVID-19 came and everything was accelerated. Right now, we’re following the Malaysian Medical Council (MMC)’s advisory, at least for the COVID-19 situation and they have put guidelines for virtual consultation with certain SOPs in place. For now, the MMC’s virtual consultation guidelines are enough but moving on post-pandemic, we really have to revise our Telemedicine Act and think about whether we are going to have new regulations or policies.” “In terms of new policies for telemedicine and teleconsultations, I think the work has already started,” she concluded.  Click here to register for the next episode of the HIMSS APAC Digital Dialogue Series.

Lunit INSIGHT MMG was first introduced at the 2018 RSNA annual meeting.

“There is a lot of discussion within the government to allow telehealth services in South Korea. It is one of the ‘new normal’ after COVID-19,” said Dr Hwang Hee, CIO, SNUBH.

Technologies adopted to tackle the COVID-19 situation at TTSH included the Staff Surveillance System (S3), Command, Control and Communications (C3) system and a real time location system (RTLS).

Earlier in March, IHH had also invested in Singapore-headquartered telehealth startup Doctor Anywhere.

“One of the most apparent shifts we’ve seen is how COVID-19 is spurring the move to virtual care,” said Caroline Clarke, Executive Vice President and Market Leader, Philips ASEAN Pacific.

In the rapidly changing modern healthcare environment, it is no longer tenable to collect patient feedback in an old-fashioned manner. The consumer patient of today is increasingly expecting a seamless, customer-centered approach to their care and having a good experience is key.  At the core, healthcare is an experience business and this applies to everyone in the healthcare ecosystem, be it patients, family members, providers or volunteers. The high quality, safe, compassionate care that is delivered at the lowest cost and/or value is often difficult and something that needs to be understood and managed closely.  As a result, experience management needs to become incorporated into the day to day operations across an organisation. Experience management – a new way of engaging with patients “Experience management (XM) is the discipline of using both experience data (X-data) and operational data (O-data) to measure and improve the four core experiences of any business: customer, employee, product and brand,” explained Susan Haufe, Healthcare Chief Industry Advisor, Qualtrics. XM enables an organisation to succeed in the demanding healthcare environment by enabling them to do three things:  Continuously Learn - understanding how the experiences delivered affect all the people (employees, customers, caregivers, etc.) that interact with the organisation. Learning how these experiences impact the organisation’s brand and culture can help them implement processes that address customer service interactions.   Propagate Insights - put the right information in the right form and in front of the right people to help them make better decisions.   Rapidly Adapt - building the capabilities to be able to respond to insights quickly and make changes to improve the experience. “Patient satisfaction surveys have been the industry’s primary tool for trying to understand and manage the experiences being delivered — but their impact is limited. To truly transform experiences, it’s time to look beyond patient satisfaction surveys and move towards a more holistic approach to accurately measure and glean insights from timely, role and site-based feedback - and then use these insights to make patients feel known and understood and help systems achieve financial health and improve quality and wellness outcomes,” said Haufe. Current patient satisfaction surveys fail to give organisations the right data, at the right time, and in the right form to surface predictive insights that matter most across the patient experience and activate the entire organisation for improved outcomes. Healthcare needs a different way to continuously listen. A new approach Gaps exist in experiences when there is a difference between what patients and families expect and what their actual experience looks and feels like.  “In order to understand where those gaps exist, you can use journey maps to identify all of the touchpoints impacting a patient’s experience. Using this method, you can create a roadmap for effectively capturing relevant feedback about the moments that matter the most from your patients,” Haufe suggests.  Once the key moments in a patient’s journey are identified, it is time to gather insights into what is working, what is not and where to make improvements.  By adding “listening posts” at each critical moment of the patient journey, the organization can then identify where to focus their energy and resources for the greatest impact. It can also decide where best to start - that might be within its contact center, through digital intercepts on the organisation’s website or mobile app, or soliciting feedback after an appointment through SMS or touch screens installed on premise.  “Modern feedback tools are different from the patient satisfaction surveys we have known. Questionnaires can be administered in real-time and are quick to complete. They ask a few insightful questions and are powered by artificial intelligence to create meaningful feedback experiences that strengthen the relationship with your customers.  The approach is facile, so as you learn more about the experiences of the people that matter most (not only your patients and families, but also your staff, providers and communities you serve), you can mold and adjust your data collection to gain deeper understanding. Results are collected on a single platform allowing for deeper analytics and insight delivered in real-time,” added Haufe. Listening leads to insights and action Once an organisation has comprehensive experience data (X-data) from a variety of sources, it can begin to layer that data with their operational data (O-data) to transform how this information leads to powerful, clarifying insights. With the X- and O-data combined, organizations will have the tools to start making improvements with real impact. The organisation will know what it needs to fix and what impact it will have on their most important metrics, whether it is patient satisfaction, clinical outcomes, or business metrics like revenue and profit. By prioritising its investments in effectively measuring patient experience, the organisation will gain the insights needed to demonstrate the impact of its improvements. Haufe concludes, “This is what XM looks like. As you strengthen the discipline of XM across your organisation, you develop habits of continuously listening, propagating insights and rapidly adapting, ultimately improving experiences.” For more information about how healthcare providers can move beyond the norm to better listen to patients, healthcare workers, and clinicians to drive maximum impact, visit here.