Patients get faster service at hospitals

Software helps keep digital database, cuts processing time

It all began with the intention to help improve medical-service provision at hospitals in rural areas, six years ago. Now, the efforts of a group of software developers led by Bangkok Hospital (Phuket) director Dr Kongkiat Kespechara have taken the form of software that can help small hospitals improve their day-to-day functioning.

Called the Hospital OS, the system based on open-source software allows hospitals, especially those in rural areas, to maintain their own electronic databases for healthcare records.

"We saw that people have to wait for a long time to get medical services from hospitals. So, we came up with the idea for a system that can help patients get better services," Kongkiat said.

Kongkiat formed the team to develop software for government hospitals with 100 beds or less, which are located in local communities. The Hospital OS has so far been in use at 80 hospitals and 60 government-clinic centres nationwide.

In recognition of its efforts, the team was recently awarded the IT Princess 2007 Award by the Foundation Research in Inform-ation Technology.

It has also found a place among the seven software companies in the Software Park Thailand's Hall of Fame.

The Hospital OS helps hospitals make the transition to electronic systems, helping them speed up routine processes, Kongkiat said. It is estimated that Hospital OS can reduce waiting time for outpatients by 20 per cent.

Hospital OS comes with modules to support both the outpatient department (OPD) and the inpatient department (IPD).

The modules include workflow management, registration, screening, diagnosis, ordering, appointment, service history and order history, pharmacy, billing, lab and X-ray reports, helping put all these medical services onto the electronic database.

From the registration process to a patient's ID or hospital number, hospital staff can access the records quickly through the system and send patients to the concerned doctor immediately.

Doctors can also feed new medical information about a patient into the system. They can also send out prescriptions electronically to pharmacists through the system.

"Instead of reading a doctor's handwriting, the pharmacists can read the prescription directly from the computer and this helps reduce errors," Kongkiat said.

Moreover, once a bigger number of government hospitals and clinics go in for Hospital OS, their systems can be linked.

The Provincial Public Health Office can then use the health-related information for healthcare planning. The Hospital OS can also be linked to Google Maps and keep Provincial Public Health officials abreast of the overall healthcare status and manage epidemics faster. The healthcare information is available in the form of visuals, text and maps.

When the hospitals are linked, officials can check the healthcare status of each area and track people infected with a disease and zero in on the area that seems to have an outbreak.

This can help at the time of formulating national policies, too.

Because the system is licence free, the team expects to expand its use to cover at least 100 hospitals by the end of this year.

There are about 700 small hospitals with 100 beds or less nationwide. This means Kongkiat's work will not be over anytime soon.