An analysis of the healthcare informatics and systems in Southeast Asia: a current perspective from seven countries

Abstract

This paper presents an overview of the healthcare systems in Southeast Asia, with a focus on the healthcare informatics development and deployment in seven countries, namely, Singapore, Cambodia, Malaysia, Thailand, Laos, the Philippines and Vietnam. Brief geographic and demographic information is provided for each country, followed by a historical review of the national strategies for healthcare informatics development. An analysis of the state-of-the-art healthcare infrastructure is also given, along with a critical appraisal of national healthcare provisions.

An analysis of application of health informatics in Traditional Medicine: A review of four Traditional Medicine Systems

“…Among the areas that require contribution is particularly in the development of electronic health records (EHR) and lifetime health records (LHR) (Nguyen et al, 2008). This effort shall be able to standardize the health information shared and treatment received by patients who visit multiple healthcare providers and increase regulation by the Ministry of Health.…”

“…Malaysia are executed to support modern medicine (Abd Ghani, Bali, Naguib, & Marshall, 2008;Nguyen et al, 2008). Other informatics infrastructure are still under development or have not yet fully implemented.…”

“…Common healthcare informatics applications used in the Malaysian public healthcare system include telemedicine, clinical information systems, information support for laboratory, radiology and pharmacy (Nguyen et al, 2008 (Insurance, 2015).…”

Meaningful use and meaningful curricula: a survey of health informatics programmes in the USA

“…The advent of Meaningful Use of EHR presents not only a challenge of using certified technology to handle healthcare needs; it also presents a challenge of the preparedness of Meaningful Users who must use these technologies. Health informatics and healthcare systems implementation are being evidenced across Europe and Asia (Grimson, 2001;Nguyen et al, 2008). Only five years ago, about a quarter of US physicians were reported to be using the EHRs (Jha et al, 2006).…”

Open-source LIMS in Vietnam: The path toward sustainability and host country ownership

“…A study conducted in 2008 similarly showed that paper records remained the norm for patient records with only 5% of public hospitals using computerized systems for patient management [3]. A 2008 case study found that the biggest factors limiting adoption of health information systems were lack of qualified IT staff in the health field and lack of financial investment [4].…”