With the increase in the speed of information transfer, people are getting much closer than before and at the same time, our individual privacy is getting jeopardized. Very often, some information is being twisted, purposely or not, before being broadcasted. So, security in the spread of information is getting more and more important nowadays. And yet security should not be an excuse for excluding Information Technology in our further developments.
In the independent SARS investigation by Select Committee of the Legislative Council, it was said that certain Government officials did purposely hide the seriousness of Atypical Pneumonia in the very beginning and as such led to a delay in the decision by the Authority. And if not for the establishment of the private public network between HKDU and colleagues in the public hospitals, our Union would not be the pioneer to alert the colleagues and the community on time last year.
Now, we have established the Rapid Communication System through fax and emails to disseminate important professional affairs to our members so that every colleague would be able to get ready to cope with new happenings in the Medical World in Hong Kong on time. However, members response to the Hong Kong Doctors Directory and to our survey on Information Technology plans is not satisfactory. We have only a slightly more than 300 responses for the Hong Kong Doctors Directory and 70 odd returns on our future Information Technology plans.
As the amount of information flow going through the internet and mobile network is growing exponentially, medical and health information will of course follow suit. With the growing Internet population, the IT revolution will be coming real fast. In no time, it will be another platform information exchange and we have to get prepared for this.
In spite of low response from members on IT plans, your Council has a vision to help our Profession more updated or cyber look through the most use out of the rapid developing information technology. And hopefully with your support, we dont wish any one of you left out.
Cyber clinics used to describe those institutes that cure computer problems. We wish to introduce another meaning of that term to describe our clinics. Cyber clinic would mean something like Cyber caf where people inside these premises are actually making full use of Information Technology.
Without prejudice, our Union wish to propose some grades for Cyber Clinics and these are described as follows:
1. Grade 0 Cyber clinics meaning there is zero usage of computers in the clinics;
2. Grade 1 Cyber clinics 閖 meaning there is minimal computer usage in the clinics in the form of sending and receiving medical information through the internet. A good example is receiving medical or health information through our Rapid Communication System;
3. Grade 2 Cyber clinics meaning that there is moderate usage of computers in the clinic for word processing, issuing documents, drug labels, patient registration in addition to Grade 1 with the exception of not using the computer for medical records;
4. Grade 3 Cyber clinics meaning the full usage of computer systems including back up systems to run the clinics; in another words, such clinics can be paperless except for hard copies like certificates, or drug labels for patients, other customers and suppliers.
There had been numerous attempts in sharing health information amongst medical practitioners, and this is the time to review the situation for continuity of medical care for citizens. Imagine we can acquire the status of a patient after attending the Accident and Emergency Departments, retrieve his discharge summary, and enquire on the medication and investigations of a patient who has been attending specialist Outpatient departments by a few keystrokes, aren't these dreams at the back of our mind for years?
The technology for all these are now mature, and all we have to overcome is human factor, and that is, the willingness to share such data. HKDU has begun negotiations with HA and Information Technology Service Departments of the HKSAR Government in the hope of making all these come true. If members have any suggestions, please voice them out so that we can take these into account during the negotiations.
As a start, we would do IT usage promotions in our territory wide CME study group sessions and as this is useful in our future medical practice, these extra introductory sessions on Medical IT usage would be awarded CME points too.
Second, we would recruit members or even their staff to attend regional IT workshops co-organized with the IT service departments of the HKSAR government to tune them into the ever changing IT world, especially cater for medical practitioners.
Finally, we have negotiated with the Hospital Authority to get acquainted and use their Clinical Management System (CMS) with the hope that there is only one CMS exists in the private and public medical industry in Hong Kong so much so that future and further communications would be at arms length to achieve our sharing of data for continuous health care of our community. A pilot study for such collaboration would be geared in soon and please fill in the enclosed survey form (Circular No. 0432) to facilitate our mission.
So you may visualize our plan is to help those members who are interested in this way forward and can upgrade themselves with the benchmark of Cyber clinic from Grade 0 up to Grade 3. Do you think grading of your clinic is acceptable to our future IT plans?
Dr. Yeung Chiu Fat Henry