e-Health in Hong Kong

How many private doctors have computerized their clinic work? The answer is pretty low. Shall we stop developing and promoting e-Health in Hong Kong then? The answer is definitively NOT!

As in most developed areas, Hong Kong has a lot of ongoing changes with the advances in Science and Technology. The implementation of electronic health records has improved access to relevant health information and enables patients and providers to make better decisions about their care in Hong Kong public health care system and elsewhere.

Factors, such as privacy and compartmentization as commented by Harvard report on Health Care Reform in 1999, have hindered public private cooperation in health information exchange so much so that private doctors would be seen to be keen on intranet data sharing only but not data sharing with the public sector. This might affect patients to obtain independent second opinion from other physicians, or to exclude undesirable health history due to incomplete health records. These are just a few of the hurdles to universal e-Health system in a democratic society like Hong Kong.

Back in 1995, we have established our Information Technology Committee (IT) to look into the developments of IT and advise the Council to develop and implement IT projects to help colleagues in their daily work. Our EDA Electronic Bulletin Board was first established in 1995, two years before the establishment of the EDA homepage and later the HKDU homepage. With the help of the Professional Services Development Assistance Scheme, we have recently enhanced our existing CME platform in terms of content management and professional communication capabilities. And to facilitate the online searching of useful CME websites, we have built a library of local and overseas CME websites, categorized according to the nature and specialty of the websites. A CME Aid platform has also been constructed for members to obtain online help from members of other specialties and HKDU. The intention is to allow a group of medical practitioners, including medical specialists, giving opinions to colleagues who might need immediate expert advice at time of consultation in their offices. This is known as the HKDU CCMN (Content Development and Clinical Communicator Network Platform).

We have further our venture into developing our own Clinic Management System (CMS), which according to our software house, would be ready towards the later half of this year. Of course, we have specified the requirements of the clinic of a private family doctor or general practitioner with separate sections on billing and contract medicine. It should be user friendly and thoroughly tested before launching to our members.

In parallel, we have joint venture with the Commerce, Industry and Technology Bureau of HKSAR to introduce computer training courses to members so that they can be tuned to get ready for future e-Health development in Hong Kong. All and all, these are the measures that the Union and other Medical bodies have joined force to help our colleagues, especially our senior ones, to adapt to such an Information Upsurge in their clinic work.

This year, with the success of the e-Health Convention held in 2006, our Union has joined the e-Health Consortium as one of the organizing members. In fact, the e-Health Consortium was evolved from 2003 after SARS as a means of developing a platform for knowledge and experience exchange among IT and health professionals in the areas of disease tracking and control.

In the recent meeting of the Consortium on 27 March 2007, I have made a remark that, no matter what we do, e-Health would realize in Hong Kong within a decade and the reason is that students in the Medical Schools of the two Universities in Hong Kong are already learning Medicine through e-Learning. When these students graduate, e-Health is just a natural phenomenon for them. While doctors like us have to learn from the beginning in e-Health, and we only have the time of a decade. Some colleagues certainly would retire by then, but not all.

Besides CMS in our clinic local console, we have to learn the integration of the electronic health records, electronic medical records and the electronic patient records (ePR). Ever since the introduction of PPI-ePR sharing Pilot Project by the Hospital Authority (HA), more than 500 private doctors have joined the project and at the same time, over 8,446 (as at 16 April 2007) patients participate since April 2006. It would be about time to look at the results and to think of the way forward after one year. For those colleagues who are interested, you are most welcome to join the evaluation meeting held by HA on 7 May 2007 to express your views and comments.

The success of e-Health in Hong Kong depends very much on you!

Dr. Yeung Chiu Fat Henry