COVID-19: Malaysia’s pandemic approaches and its impact on telehealth

Within the fourth episode of the HIMSS APAC Digital Dialogue Series hosted by Dr Charles Alessi, HIMSS Chief Scientific Officer, customer speakers Professor Dr Tunku Kamarul Zaman bin Tunku Zainol Abidin, Director, College Malaya Scientific Center (UMMC) and Dr Fazilah Shaik Allaudin, Senior Deputy Director, Scientific Enhance Division, Ministry of Effectively being (MOH) Malaysia spoke their respective organizations’ technique to containing the outbreak and talked about COVID-19’s impact on telehealth in Malaysia.

UMMC and MOH’s approaches to containing the pandemic

By manner of going thru challenges and uncertainties triggered by COVID-19, UMMC utilized built-in recordsdata methods to:

• Tune and put together indispensable affords equivalent to Non-public Protective Tools (PPE)
• Arrange healthcare employees and tracing their actions to cleave threat
• Optimize affected person care and assemble definite related recordsdata is delivered successfully
• Retain surveillance of disease clusters and monitoring medicine plans of sufferers

A truly well-known consideration that Professor Dr Tunku Kamarul Zaman talked about used to be the psychological impact of COVID-19 on healthcare employees, which used to be brought up to him by the usage of his virtual meetings and interactions from their collaborators in China, equivalent to Shanghai Jiao Tong College.

From the MOH’s standpoint, one amongst the instruments feeble within the multi-agency effort in opposition to the pandemic used to be the introduction of the MySejahtera app which used to be developed by the Malaysian executive to assist in monitoring of COVID-19 outbreak within the nation, Dr Fazilah explained. A couple of of the points of the app encompass COVID-19 health guidelines, recordsdata on the closest health providers and a COVID-19 hotspot tracker.

MySejahtera is linked to the MyTrace app, developed by Malaysia’s Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation (MOSTI) which enables the identification of different folks which had been in shut proximity to an infected particular person the usage of Bluetooth expertise. 

Malaysia’s 1997 Telemedicine Act

The Telemedicine Act 1997 is a Malaysian legislation that used to be enacted to maintain for the law and utilize an eye fixed on of the note of telemedicine and for issues linked therewith. Addressing a participant’s query on how telehealth is being managed within the course of the COVID-19 pandemic within the nation, Professor Dr Tunku Kamarul Zaman clarified that telemedicine is terribly train because it entails consultation, which has now no longer took situation yet. What has been carried out at UMMC helps sufferers retrieve outcomes online and arranging for dwelling shipping of medicine for sufferers.

“With ‘appropriate’ telemedicine that entails consultation and medicine prescription, we’ve been very careful with that as there are rather a necessity of regulatory points we must overcome and we having a six classes’ debate on that all the draw thru the university, taking a see at the superb print. Truly, the Telemedicine Act of 1997 has now no longer been revised to this present day’s requirements. By manner of telehealth, we started a couple of things however it is now no longer the ‘pure’ telemedicine model,” Professor Dr Tunku Kamarul Zaman acknowledged.

Dr Fazilah added that the Telemedicine Act used to be more of a supplier-to-supplier more or less consultation, which needs to be revised and it used to be by no manner in actuality enforced. “We’re beginning some work to search at the law of online health providers however COVID-19 came and all the pieces used to be accelerated. Correct now, we’re following the Malaysian Scientific Council (MMC)’s advisory, no decrease than for the COVID-19 bother and they own put guidelines for virtual consultation with sure SOPs in situation. For now, the MMC’s virtual consultation guidelines are ample however involving on submit-pandemic, we in actual fact must revise our Telemedicine Act and think whether we are going to own unique regulations or insurance policies.”

“By manner of unique insurance policies for telemedicine and teleconsultations, I focus on the work has already started,” she concluded. 

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