HCM City (VNA) – Ho Chi Minh City has invested extensively in smarthealthcare development, with a focus on healthcare big data platform and theuse of information technology in hospital management and expertise management, saida municipal health official.

HCM City-basedhospitals are required to create electronic medical records of internationalstandards for local residents, said Tang Chi Thuong, Deputy Director of the municipalDepartment of Health.

Eachcitizen would have a single national patient identifier, he said while speakingat a workshop on smart healthcare in HCM City on December 14.

Thu DucDistrict Hospital was the first medical centre in the city getting approvalfrom the Ministry of Health to create electronic medical records, he said,adding that many hospitals were set to follow suit.

Todevelop smart healthcare, the city would first build a smart emergency medicalresponse centre and a database on disease surveillance, he said.

Since2016 the department has been calling for the use of IT in hospitaladministration.

A lot ofspecialised software has been developed for managing medical workers, patienthealth records, drugs and pharmaceuticals, and health warehouses.

Manyhospitals have adopted artificial intelligence to enhance their treatmentquality, including robot-assisted surgery by Binh Dan Hospital and 115 People'shospital.

Le ThanhLiem, Vice Chairman of the municipal People’s Committee, said the extensive useof IT in the health sector had shown positive results and contributed to thedevelopment of a smart city in future. 

In 2017,the city finalised the project to become a smart city in 2017-2020.

Itinvolves the development of an information technology platform for a smart cityand technology solutions in many areas such as traffic, environment, publicsecurity, and healthcare.

Expertssaid in a smart hospital the software is fully inter-connected to activelysupport technical and professional activities and improve medical examinationand treatment and hospital management.

Theworkshop attracted 300 hospital managers, doctors and international healthexperts./.