ICT Matters
Tele-Health, Tele-Medicine, & Tele-Pharmacy:
Malaysia is blessed with a government that has an excellent vision on the Information and Communication Technology matters. Tele-Health is one of the seven flagship applications determined under the Multimedia Super Corridor that was launched in 1996. Tele-Medicine and Tele-Pharmacy are two complimentary components that form the Tele-Health ICT delivery system.
ICT applications in healthcare in general have been developed on a piece-meal basis rather than a well co-ordinate national integrated healthcare system that can access into one another database. There is a need to integrate all the healthcare ICT systems to facilitate the building up of an invaluable national database in healthcare matters.
A National Medication Management Superhighway:
Tele-Medicine project, that was launched a few years ago, had failed to achieve the ambitious objectives. Nonetheless, the failure provides an important lesson in the future effort. New initiatives have been undertaken by some private firms to develop a simpler and yet feasible National Medication Management Superhighway ICT System where all the pharmacies and clinics can be linked into it.
It is not possible for MCPA to commission a team of ICT experts to develop a new pharmacy system for the use by all the community pharmacists. The prohibitive capital requirement, a great risk, and a high commercial element make it necessary for some community pharmacists to develop it through private capital. Although a number of private community pharmacies already had computer facilities with POS features, Malaysia still needs a Pharmacy System that can assist to deliver a high standard of professional pharmacy practice/service throughout the country.
However, MCPA is in the right position to provide the specifications for the ICT System to be developed. For instance, the system has to be user-friendly while possessing all the capabilities to assist community pharmacists to dispense all the prescriptions properly, with adequate medication counseling, clear labeling, and automatic patient medication recording. The ICT System needs to be able to interface with other healthcare systems as well as the impending National Health Financing Scheme.