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Hello everyone. I am Than Htike Aung from Myanmar and you can call me Aung. My got my Bachelor degree in Medicine and Surgery, got Master degree in Computer Science. I hope this program will help me to bridge these two different disciplines together. I am currently working as a manager in an INGO and manages digital health related projects. Therefore, this program will help me a lot to improve my knowledge in implementation of my work.
Moreover, I hope to learn invaluable experiences from all the teachers and other students as well. Looking forward to learning with all of you together. -
I would like to contribute about Health Information Exchange (HIE) as one example for this discussion.
Patients visit multiple clinics, hospitals, and labs throughout their life. Each facility keeps its own records, often in different formats and separate systems. This causes:- Delays in care because previous medical history isn’t available
- Duplicate tests and procedures
- Incomplete patient information for decision-making
- Difficulty in public health reporting and analysis
Therefore, we need HIE. It allows secure sharing of health data between different healthcare organizations and systems, following interoperability standards such as HL7 and FHIR. It acts as a central bridge that connects different healthcare platforms. If we scale up, it can becomes data repository for different programs under ministry, different ministries under same country and between different industries (e.g., between healthcare and insurance).
Hardware
Problem: Reliable internet can be big issue in some countries and some areas.
Solution: Think and build as offline first approach for data exchange with on-demand data synchronization processes.Software
Problem: Different departments will use different ISs even under the same hospital lacking no common data exchange format.
Solution: Implement standardized data exchange protocols. Seamless integration with existing platforms is important for successful implementation.Data
Problem: Inconsistent patient identifiers across different facilities causing mismatched or duplicated records.
Solution: Introduce Master Patient Index (MPI) to uniquely identify patients across all systems.Process
Problem: Procedure to request medical records can be complicated and cause delays.
Solution: Develop simple procedure and automated as much as possible including consent-based access by the patient.People
Problem: Healthcare staffs may be unfamiliar with HIE workflows and privacy concerns.
Solution: Role-based access and provide training to staffs as well as educate the patients.
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