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The Secretary for Health, Welfare and Food, Dr Yeoh Eng-kiong, today (May 14) said the government would continue to enhance the information management capacity across sectors to strengthen Hong Kong's ability in preventing and controlling infectious diseases.
Dr Yeoh made the remark after visiting the Express Dispensary System (EDS) of the Pamela Youde Nethersole Eastern Hospital.
Noting the Hospital Authority (HA) had mapped out its information technology/information system strategy since 1991, Dr Yeoh said the HA had developed a core clinical management system to support and facilitate the provision of direct patient services.
"The implementation of these systems had enhanced efficiency in the registration of hospital admission, shortened queuing time for specialist out-patients and drug dispensing, and brought improvements to the communication of laboratory tests and diagnostic results," he said.
The use of EDS in specialist out-patient services had reduced average waiting time for drug dispensing to the present 22 minutes from about an hour when the traditional manual method was used.
"During the SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) outbreak last year, the EDS also provided a link to differentiate suspected SARS patients with a higher risk from others," Dr Yeoh said.
Besides improving efficiency of health care, Dr Yeoh said information technology also played an important role in safeguarding public health.
"This is best demonstrated in last year's SARS outbreak in which the innovative integration of HA's real time information system of suspected SARS patients with the Department of Health's (DH) Case Contact Information System and the Police's criminal tracking tool, had greatly enhanced efficiency in tracing the contacts of SARS patients for isolation and treatment.
"The successful marriage of the three systems had helped speed up identifying most of the 26,000 contacts during the peak of the epidemic last April.
"Timely identification followed by swift isolation action was instrumental in turning the tide in our fight against the epidemic," he said.
Dr Yeoh took the opportunity to thank colleagues in the HA, DH and the Police who had taken part in the project, now termed "Policing Disease", which was named one of the winners in the Health category of the Stockholm Challenge early this morning (Hong Kong time).
Building on successful experience and acting on the advice of the SARS Expert Committee, Dr Yeoh said the government would continue to enhance information management capacity, not only within the health care sector, but across all sectors to strengthen Hong Kong's capacity in preventing and controlling communicable diseases.
He said that the government would submit a funding proposal to the Legislative Council for the development of a Communicable Disease Information System (CDIS) which will form a critical tool for the Centre for Health Protection.
"The CDIS will enable both the public and private sector to perform the critical functions of disease surveillance including case notification, timely alert and early detection of emerging infectious diseases.
"Upon its completion, the CDIS will capture data from medical practitioners working in both the private and public sector, public and private laboratories, and sentinel networks in schools, elderly homes and private clinics," Dr Yeoh said.
Ends/Friday, May 14, 2004
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