Page 330 - ANUAL REPORT MOH 2017

WAY FORWARD

In view of the growing need for the development of more health facility projects in the future, this section
recognizes the need to expedite the pre-construction planning phase. It is therefore timely for us to
work closely with the Public Works Department to explore strategies to improve project implementation
processes.
One of the strategies employed is to continuously improve existing standard plans based on feedback
from users and to develop more standard plans based on current needs. We have identified the need to
produce more compact health clinic standard plans to address issues of land constraint in urban areas.

Besides that, there is also the need to have more standard hospital designs to cater for bigger and
specialist hospitals.

eHEALTH STRATEGIC PLANNING UNIT

Two main activities completed by this unit in 2017 are:

1. SITUATIONAL ANALYSIS TO IDENTIFY THE NEED FOR ONLINE HEALTHCARE SERVICE
REGULATORY FRAMEWORK
Online healthcare is a new method to deliver healthcare services in alignment with the advancement of
digital technology. Among the services offered by the private companies through mobile applications are:
i. Online consultation via video-call, voice-chat and texting
ii. Medical personnel e-hailing applications to deliver patient care at client’s location
iii. Online ambulance request for non-emergency cases
iv. Online request for blood taking at client’s location
v. Online medication prescription and dispensing to client’s location
vi. Online clinic appointment scheduling

Director General of Health (DG) had instructed eHealth Planning Section to study the legal implication
and readiness of current Acts and Regulation to ensure the online healthcare services are regulated
and comply with five (5) guiding principles of healthcare, which are patient safety, quality of care,
confidentiality and privacy, accountability, and traceability. Some inputs were obtained from the relevant
Ministry of Health (MoH) divisions, regulatory bodies and central agencies in two (2) meetings and a
workshop on 25 to 26 October 2017 and few more feedbacks from 11 companies were gathered in
a dialogue session between these companies and DG on the last day of the workshop. Deputy DG
of Research and Technical Support and Director of Planning were also present during the dialogue
session. Conclusion from these discussions is that current Acts and Regulations are insufficient to
regulate online healthcare services. Therefore, a specific regulatory framework is required to regulate
these online healthcare services.

MINISTRY OF HEALTH MALAYSIA ANNUAL REPORT 2017 329