The concept of Hospital Network is to pool the existing facilities and infrastructure to provide patients with seamless medical treatment through the 17 Bangkok Hospital sites nationwide.

The idea is to share medical resources and patient data among networked hospitals to promote operational efficiencies and to improve healthcare services.

Monpra-on Sukroongreung, IT director of Bangkok Hospital, said it is part of the hospital's patient-centric strategy with an aim to allow patients to go for treatment at any hospital site with the same hospital number.

Under the concept, the patient-registration system is to be pooled in order to easily identify patients. Their details will then be integrated with other systems such as patient records and laboratory systems.

Eventually, the hospital will pool all resources including doctors' consultations into a single network. "All applications will be run over the Internet protocol network liking all 17 hospital branches," said Monpra-on.

Patients will be treated seamlessly by doctors who specialise in specific areas such as cardiac or nervous-system diagnosis.

"The system allows the hospitals to provide the best diagnosis for patients, even if they are somewhere outside Bangkok, or outside the country.

"Even though we now pool the consultations from doctors at different sites, this only happens case-by-case. We aim to make this kind of facility a regular service," said Monpra-on.

The implementation is scheduled to start this year with the patient registration system and the laboratory.

Asina Pornwasin

The Nation