IT – our silent partner in improving patient care

Information technology is playing an increasingly important role in all aspects of our lives – including healthcare. Since its inception, the Hospital Authority has set up its IT team to help improve public medical services by developing tech-based solutions to meet various clinical needs.

HASLink highlights some of the many ways in which technology is supporting HA in its mission to ensure people in Hong Kong enjoy the highest standards of medical diagnosis, treatment and care.

Hi-tech developments make life easier for patients

With IT playing an increasingly important role in diagnostic and treatment services, the Hospital Authority is also making good use of new technology to develop mobile applications and e-systems to enhance patient’s services.

TouchMed app frees patients from extended pharmacy waits

Typically in HA acute hospitals, the pharmacy handles more than 1,000 prescriptions a day. This high demand for services means that patients who collect their medicines during peak hours may be faced with a long waiting time. However, with the development of a new mobile app, individuals can manage their time with greater flexibility while waiting for their medicines. Launched last June, the HA’s free download ‘TouchMed’ app for smartphones has an easy-to-use interface that simply requires patients to select the appropriate pharmacy and input their ticket number. The app will then automatically send an alert to the patients’ smartphones once their medicines are ready for collection. Patients may also check the real-time collection status of prescription without having to be present in the pharmacy waiting area. ‘TouchMed’ has been launched in about 30 HA hospital pharmacies in Hong Kong.

e-records platform brings public and private healthcare providers closer

The vision to have a centralised platform for sharing patient records between the public and private healthcare sectors in Hong Kong and the need to improve the service gap have led to the Government’s development of Electronic Health Record Sharing System (eHRSS) since 2009. Being the technical agency, the Hospital Authority is committed to developing the necessary data standards and infrastructure for the eHR Programme.

The eHRSS will allow public and private healthcare providers to view and share patients’ medical records with their consent. The system will advance the quality and efficiency of patient care by providing healthcare professionals with authorised online access to comprehensive medical histories. It will reduce the needs of duplicated tests or treatments, enable quality assured clinical practice as well as improvement in disease surveillance and monitoring of public health.

Besides the usual technical challenges, the main missions in establishing this comprehensive platform is to ensure that security measures for this robust system are in place to protect data privacy. Another challenge is building sufficient expansion capacity as the volume of patient data and medical records stored is expected to grow significantly in the future.

IT centre staff work 24/7 to keep systems fit and healthy

Just like the medical team, the Hospital Authority’s IT professionals work in shifts to provide an around-the-clock service every day of the year. Two IT support centres are responsible for keeping HA’s IT systems in good shape.

Set up in 2001, the Call Centre at Pamela Youde Nethersole Eastern Hospital has about 25 people working three shifts daily. Freda Chan, Systems Manager, is in charge of the Call Centre. “We deal with more than 11,000 calls each month. Around one third is from frontline staff reporting application issues relating to clinical medicine systems. The rest involve issues such as password recovery and hard disk failures.”

The Call Centre also monitors the use of software on hospital systems. Freda advises colleagues who need IT assistance to call the help desk on 2515 2653 or file an online ‘Service Desk’ request via the intranet (callcentre.home) for a prompt response.

David Yu, System Analyst who is leading the Infrastructure Operations Centre (IOC), says to ensure the smooth operations of the hospital’s IT systems, his team keeps a round-the-clock monitoring service and takes immediate actions to rectify any service disruption. The dedicated supporting staff in IOC oversee the healthiness of more than 1,000 servers and 8,000 network equipment in HA which are instrumental to HA’s healthcare services.

Stringent IT security measures help

Protecting patient data privacy is Hospital Authority’s commitment and is also each colleague’s responsibility. HA has established a robust framework of security measures to safeguard patient data from being inappropriately disclosed or misused, either through careless mistakes or due to external threats such as virus or hacker attacks. The broad range of measures include various IT security controls as well as colleagues’ good privacy protection practices in the workplace and our online social network.

USBs encryption for privacy protection

HA’s privacy protection policy prohibits colleagues from exporting scanned data directly to an unencrypted USB flash drive from an all-in-one printer. No confidential patient data should be downloaded to removable storage devices such as USB flash drive.

Colleagues are only permitted to store patient information through desktop on encrypted USB flash drives if there is absolute need. The loss of such drive must be immediately reported to hospital management.

Demilitarised zone to deter hacker

HA’s IT network includes a ‘demilitarised zone’, which contain security devices such as firewalls, intrusion prevention systems, anti-virus and anti-spam programmes amied to protect HA’s system from external network attacks.