The national telehealth systems (NTS) will connect hospital-based medical specialists and patients in remote and isolated areas in the country where access to quality medical specialty care is low. This in turn will reduce unnecessary travels and hospitalizations of patients by connecting them to the medical specialists right away. It will also promote stronger local partnerships both for patients and medical practitioners.
The National Telehealth Center (NTHC) in UP Manila, together with the DOH, implements the NTS in at least 250 pilot municipalities, from Batanes to Tawi-Tawi.
NTHC is the leading research unit in the University of the Philippines responsible for developing cost effective tools and innovations in the realm of information and communications technology (ICT) for improving health care.
Information systems on health, such as electronic health records, disease surveillance systems, laboratory information systems, including hospital patient administration systems, is an emerging need of health workers in the Philippines most especially on cases that requires longitudinal care.
“For so long, we have known that the accurate and timely data in our local health centers hold the key to monitoring the performance of our health system. But since time immemorial, government has not systematically implemented in such information systems,” DOH Secretary Enrique Ona said in a telehealth symposium organized by the National Telehealth Center in UP Manila last July 3.
“Now that we are in the middle of President Aquino’s term, we need to be more decisive with our ICT strategies in health,” Ona said.
The implementation of the AO supports KP’s strategic instruments “to establish a modern information system that shall provide evidence for policy and program development, and support for immediate and efficient provision of health care and management of province-wide health systems.”
The AO is among the policy efforts in institutionalizing telehealth in the Philippines, a tool seen to bridge an archipelagic country bedecked with geographic and social challenges to health care. House bill 6336 or the Telehealth Bill which aims to regulate telehealth practice in the country was filed by then Cavite Representative Joseph Emilio Aguinaldo Abaya in June 2012; this will again be lobbied for this new Congress.
The AO on telehealth conforms to the provisions of the Data Privacy Act of 2012 to protect the privacy of patients.
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Quelle/Source: Philippine Information Agency, 18.07.2013
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