Taipei Veterans General Hospital plans to adopt an electronic database that will keep track of patients' records, a move that could potentially boost hospital efficiency.
Hospital administrators hope the system will reduce the time physicians spend searching for patient records and enable patients to receive their medical records by e-mail.
The system is also expected to make the exchange of records between hospitals smoother.
Veterans General Hospital and the Industrial Technology Research Institute jointly developed the database. The system has already been installed in the pediatric neurosurgery department at the hospital.
"From now on, patients in pediatric neurosurgery can take their own records home, saved on a CD-ROM disc, including electronic images and audio records such as the sound of their heart," said Hung Ti-tung (
"We can send records of text, images or voice by e-mail or fax, or just print it out to patients and their new physicians."
Hung said the database would save time and manpower when it comes to the handling of patient records. In addition, he said, it would simplify the process of exchanging records between hospitals.
"The database also has strong functions in searching, classifying and processing statistics, which is useful for clinical decisions, clinical research and the writing up of research," Hung added.
Though the database is currently up and running in pediatric neurosurgery department, other departments at the hospital are expected to implement the system as well.
"But there is no time fixed for its inception since it's a pilot program," said Tang Dah-dian (
Jeng Jiann-hwa (
"The whole process, from registration, the doctor's diagnosis and instructions, to patient records, can be made transparent and convenient," Jeng said.
Many large hospitals are developing similar systems to save time and space and to improve the handling of out-of-date patient records.
The Department of Health has proposed an electronic information project that is awaiting the Executive Yuan's approval.
The project called HIN 2.0 -- or Health Information Network, second version -- is intended to improve upon an existing information network developed in 1988.
"The existing HIN mainly focuses on processing public health insurance claims and barely touches on clinical information," said Hsu Chang-e (
"This project's vision is that every citizen can have access to his own health records from the prenatal to the geriatric stages," Hsu said.
The long-term plan, according to the health department, is for hospitals to digitize information so that patients have access to their records in an electronic format.
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