Taiwan’s “innovative” integration of electronic health records with immigration data enabled its targeted response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the International Hospital Federation (IHF) said in a report released this month.
An IHF Beyond COVID-19 Task Force report, published on Thursday last week, offered insights into how hospitals can embrace new ways of delivering healthcare while responding to the evolving pandemic, and Taiwan’s response was highlighted to show the importance of sharing information and access.
The National Health Insurance Administration’s (NHIA) strategy to share information through MediCloud — which provides healthcare providers and patients with real-time access to health records — to control the pandemic was a key factor in the nation’s success in capping COVID-19 outbreaks and deaths, the report said.
“Although the system was not initially designed to stop a pandemic, it was nimble enough to be reoriented toward one,” the report said.
To help the system identify potential cases, the NHIA created COVID-19 risk indicators in the MediCloud system related to travel footprints, occupation, contacts and clusters, it said.
By linking MediCloud with border entry and exit data uploaded from the National Immigration Agency, the administration created a centralized, real-time alert system for potential COVID-19 cases, the report said.
“These automatic system alerts allow healthcare providers to obtain patients’ travel history, high-risk occupation, contact history and clustering at mass gatherings in real-time, enabling a more efficient triage and accurate diagnosis of COVID-19,” the report said. “This enhancement to the MediCloud system has been vital to Taiwan’s precision testing strategy, which is efficient in testing a small, but critical number of people, instead of mass testing.”
NHIA Director-General Lee Po-chang (李伯璋) said that he welcomed the recognition of Taiwan’s strategy as an honor for all healthcare workers in the nation.
The Geneva, Switzerland-based IHF established the task force to help hospitals adopt effective practices and strategies developed during the pandemic, the report said.
The pandemic has accelerated healthcare innovation at an unprecedented pace, toward more effective and agile models of care — a transformation needed in many systems worldwide, the IHF said.
Taiwan has arranged for about 8 million barrels of crude oil, or about one-third of its monthly needs, to be shipped from the Red Sea this month to bypass the Strait of Hormuz and ease domestic supply pressures, CPC Corp, Taiwan (CPC, 台灣中油) said yesterday. The state-run oil company has worked with Middle Eastern suppliers to secure routes other than the Strait of Hormuz, through which about 20 percent of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas typically passes, CPC chairman Fang Jeng-zen (方振仁) said at a meeting of the legislature’s Economics Committee in Taipei. Suppliers in Saudi Arabia have indicated they
South Korea has adjusted its electronic arrival card system to no longer list Taiwan as a part of China, a move that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said would help facilitate exchanges between the two sides. South Korea previously listed “Taiwan” as “Taiwan (China)” in the drop-down menus of its online arrival card system, where people had to fill out where they came from and their next destination. The ministry had requested South Korea make a revision and said it would change South Korea’s name on Taiwan’s online immigration system from “Republic of Korea” to “Korea (South),” should the issue not be
Tainan, Taipei and New Taipei City recorded the highest fines nationwide for illegal accommodations in the first quarter of this year, with fines issued in the three cities each exceeding NT$7 million (US$220,639), Tourism Administration data showed. Among them, Taipei had the highest number of illegal short-term rental units, with 410. There were 3,280 legally registered hotels nationwide in the first quarter, down by 14 properties, or 0.43 percent, from a year earlier, likely indicating operators exiting the market, the agency said. However, the number of unregistered properties rose to 1,174, including 314 illegal hotels and 860 illegal short-term rental
AIR ALERT: China’s reservation of airspace over the Yellow Sea and East China Sea could be an attempt to test the US’ response ahead of a Trump-Xi meeting, the NSB head said China’s attempts to infiltrate Taiwan are systematic, planned and targeted, with activity shifting from recruiting mid-level military officers to rank-and-file enlisted personnel, National Security Bureau (NSB) Director-General Tsai Ming-yen (蔡明彥) said yesterday. The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) integrates national security, intelligence operations and “united front” efforts into a dense network to conduct intelligence gathering and espionage in Taiwan, Tsai said at a meeting of the legislature’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee. It uses specific networks to screen targets through exchange activities and recruiting local collaborators to establish intelligence-gathering organizations, he said. China is also shifting who it targets to lower-ranking military personnel,
RSS