Ching To Chung

I remember an incident that happened in my primary school/secondary school days that is a breach of confidentiality and caused a big mess

What happened?
It was the beginning of the school year and students are given their username and passwords to log into the school system for the first time. However, the username and passwords were short and…[Read more]

This is a very interesting topic indeed! A very original and creative idea. I find diseases related to toxicology very intriguing. I live in Hong Kong where mushrooms are not a common sight, but occassionally I do hear news about hikers trying toxic mushrooms resulting severe consequences.
The system could potentially be very useful such that we…[Read more]

Strength: Self Management
I think I am one of the very few people who say I am good at this. I am very slow to anger and remain calm at unexpected situations since I am good at deriving solutions. For example, when I was travelling to Japan with my friends, we missed the last train. While my friends were panicking, I was able to keep calm and…[Read more]

Singapore

Be First: The prime minister addresses the public in a timely manner by providing an update on the coronavirus situation and the government’s response. The speech is given within two weeks of the COVID outbreak which is in time.

Be Right: The speech contains accurate information about the virus, its characteristics, and governm…[Read more]

Hong Kong has been driving its efforts towards technology and transformation. The one thing that I think we need to work on is definitely transparency and trust.
It is important for the health system to be transparent towards its users. As the paper mentioned, this would involve ensuring that data policies are fair and equal, and that privacy and…[Read more]

Past diseases that have been declared as PHEIC are as follows:
Swine flu (2009–2010)
Polio (2014–present)
Ebola (2014–2016)
Zika virus (2016)
Kivu Ebola (2019–2020)
COVID-19 (2020–2023)
Mpox (2022–2023)

The outbreaks raise such concerns because they fit the definition and criteria of a PHEIC, posing as a threat to global health. This may du…[Read more]

From the paper, I think integration with an electronic information management system would improve the two indicators of flexibiliy and representativeness.
Flexbility refers to the ability to change information needs or operating conditions with little additional resources. For the system, it is able to adapt and comply with WHO’s new case…[Read more]

1. Verification & preparation:
Information technology could help the collection of data for outbreak investigation. By collecting data electronically, it could help identify outbreak and clusters more easily. We can more easily judge if there is an outbreak through electronical medical records (EMR). For example, we could plot all suspected cases…[Read more]

Among the technologies, I think I like Data-visualization tools for decision support the most. Data dashboard is becoming more and more widely used in many fields today, including public health surveillance. Real-time data is visualized to provide an intuitive and clear view of the current situation to keep the public informed. I remembered that…[Read more]

1. How can surveillance help to detect and control the disease?

Surveillance can play a role in detecting and controlling monkeypox by providing timely and accurate information about the incidence, spread, and trends of the disease. Since monkeypox is contagious, by detecting the early signs of an outbreak, we could give medical interventions…[Read more]

Should you give the data out?
I would only consider giving the data out after sufficient steps are done to ensure that none of my participant’s privacy would be violated and that all of my actions are in line with the local privacy laws. If this is not possible, I would refuse to give out the data.

How do you not violate any of the General…[Read more]

This is a very difficult but interesting dilemma.

What should you do?
I would be emotionally tempted to tell, but as a professional I must surpress my personal instinct and protect my patient’s privacy at all costs. It is my professional ethics and obligation to safeguard the privacy of my patients. Therefore, I would not tell my friend and I…[Read more]

I would like to talk about the “LeaveHomeSafe” COVID surveillance system implemented in Hong Kong during the pandemic. During the pandemic, the government forced all citizens to use the system’s app and scan QR codes wherever they go to track their location. This is a change that failed miserably, and many things went wrong in its implementation…[Read more]

I would like to again focus on the Hedley Environmental Index Dashboard provided by the University of Hong Kong. The determinants that constitute its success are described as follows,

Data: The dashboard system collects data from surveillance stations in real time and provides updates daily. This makes sure that the data is of high-quality,…[Read more]

I have not worked with a DSS before but I have experienced how it works during treatment. I personally have a drug allergy that is recorded in my EMR. So everytime I go to receieve chemotherapy, the health monitor reads my EMR and would immediately show a big red warning that I have a drug allergy. I think the system is quite useful as it is very…[Read more]

As people above have mentioned, I think the main problem lies with standardization. The ICD helps provide a coding standard in documenting diseases, such that different healthcare providers or peripheral stakeholders such as researchers and insurers could have a consensus of coding in referring to the same disease. If the ICD is not used, there…[Read more]

I am slightly surprised about this finding. I think it is important what we compare it to. Before adopting the EMR, healthcare workers still have to document everything on paper, which is even more time consuming, writing things down and sorting through paper files. I think by standardizing some of the input fields, EMR already helped save time…[Read more]

While the boundaries that define eHealth are blurry and there could be many interpretations and overlaps for its definition, I think my definition would be ‘the use of information technology to enhance health outcomes.’ This is a definition that is easy to understand and overarching enough to cover all kinds of work that is in the field of…[Read more]