pikopong

This was published in May 2009 (Profession:Population)

1. Doctors (1:1,105)
2. Dentists (1:7,618)
3. Pharmacists (1:4,335)
4. Opticians (1:11,030)
5. Optometrists (1:40,128)
6. Asst. Medical Officers (1:3,054)
7. Asst. Pharmacy Officers (1:9,982)*
8. Asst. Environmental Health Officers (1:10,806)*
9. Medical Lab. Technologists (1:6,865)*
10. Occupational Therapists (1:65,091)*
11. Physiotherapists (1:46,760)*
12. Radiographers (1:18,267)*
13. Nurses (1:512)
14. Dental Nurses (1:12,124)
15. Community Nurses (1:1,487)
16. Dental Technicians (1:18,786)
17. Dental Surgery Assistants (1:9,336)
18. Traditional & Complementary Medicine Practitioners (1:3,173)**

Source:

1. Human Resource Devision, Ministry of Health
2. Malaysian Medical Council
3. Malaysian Dental Council
4. Pharmacy Board Malaysia
5. Malaysia Optical Council
6. Medical Assistant Board
7. Malaysia Nursing Board
8. Oral Health Division, Ministry of Health
9. Traditional & Complementary Medicine Division, Ministry of Health

Notes:

• *: Ministry of Health only
• **: Refers to voluntary registration by local practitioners & application for professional visa by foreign practitioners

Download the full version (pdf) from here.

Information System Unit of HUSM was established in year 2000 due to the specific needs of IT implementation in hospital. At that moment, there were only 4 people working, but today, the numbers has grown up to 25 people. Since the beginning of establishment, the unit has extensively developing applications software for the hospital. Lead by En. Azuddin Bin AB Rahman and his team consisting of 7 IT Officers, 13 programmers and 4 technicians, they have delivered more than 10 systems for various purposes. As computer science graduates, the team believes that they can build any application without the needs to acquire one from external sources. With that mindset, the software development alone has saved the hospital millions of ringgit.

We are using these frameworks/tools/languages/technologies in HUSM:

• Linux Slackware
• J2SE
• MySQL
• MySQL Replication
• Perl and Bash
• Python
• Apache
• XHTML, PHP & CSS
• jQuery
• ZPL II
• Subversion
• Smart Card (Mifare & MyKad)
• JasperReport

These are the applications that has been developed and still being maintained everyday by us:

LIFELINE
The core application in HUSM to manage patient’s demographic information and patients appointments records and patients accounting.

LIS (Lab Information System)
A lab information system, class of software which handles receiving, processing and storing information generated by medical laboratory processes. As one of the biggest applications developed, it is being used in 13 various labs with different modules for each one, this application is also being converted from Delphi to open source Java on Linux.

E-Folder
One of the applications in the hospital that utilize the use of human input device as in Tablet PC, Touch Screen Monitors and PDA. It is still in the early phase of development.

AMS (Asset Management System)
Used mainly to keep track of items such as stationary and others. This application is used extensively by the administrative department in order to ensure better inventory management.

POLS (Pharmacy Online Prescription)
A new application that is still being tested vigorously everyday. All prescriptions will be done through computers as opposed to the old style which subsequently will be better for the management to keep track of all procedures, minimizing mistakes, controlling the amount of drugs prescribed and so on.

SPIFU & SPIFA (Sistem Pengurusan Inventori Farmasi Ubat/Alat)
Another inventory application focusing on drugs and clinical items such as syringe, glove, and others. It is used to manage the purchasing process, tracking and updating inventory information and many more.

CSSD (Central Sterile Supply Department)
Keeping track of all the in and out records of surgery items in the hospital. This application will minimize the loss of the items. The cost for this application in the market from a German company is about RM 5 millions.

Sticker
In order to get a HUSM’s sticker, every vehicle needs to be registered in this application. It is being used by the Safety Department.

FIRAS (Film Information Reject Analisyst)
An application used by the Radiology Department to keep track of the rejected x-ray films and at the same time will generate various reports including any mishandling done by the radiology staff.

ICD 10 (International Classification of Diseases Version 10)
It is a disease coding encyclopedia and is much more efficient search can be made on any disease easily. This is an offline application.

Attendance
Using 100% opensource tools, we manage to create a Mifare Card based application to record daily attendance. In the future, fingerprints will be used to identify the staff.

Transfusion
The newest application for our Blood Bank Department which is still being developed. This application will incorporate open source MyKad reading algorithm (also was built at HUSM) to cut the time for the donors to fill out the form. There’s also a portable version for mobile usage.

Mortuary
Keeps track of deceased patients in the hospital.

HUSM Formulary
Another new application for the pharmacy department that will be used as the drugs information database. At this moment, HUSM is maintaining a bigger list of drugs than the list from Ministry of Health. Pharmacist should be able to see all the information in tree view and data from its database can be used in other applications as well such as Online Prescription.

Diet Management System
Developed by our newest IT Officer, this system is used to manage all the meal’s menu for our patients. It will be used in all patient wards when it’s completed successfully

In case you didn’t know, HUSM stands for Hospital Universiti Sains Malaysia and I’m currently working there. Early this year, my head of the department got invited by MDeC to this event. The event took place at Kuala Lumpur Convention Center from 18/5/2008 to 22/5/2008. You can read all the information about WCIT here.

To my surprise, we were the only hospital that manage software development all by ourselves. Even though Hospital Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia started developing their own, they still has to rely on vendors in terms of hardware and the database (they’re using Oracle). Other hospitals didn’t actually bring their own IT Department people, instead they sent their vendors. However, they’re some from Kementerian Kesihatan Malaysia who brought their own IT people even though the application they brought was coded by the vendor (the only difference is that they own the code, not the vendor).

The event was a really an eye opener for me. I saw lots of new technologies that has been integrated into our daily lives. It’s pretty cool to see the advancement of IT industries in Malaysia. I managed to meet some interesting developers, managers and others who has a lot of experience in the industry itself. Not to forget, I also managed to come close to our Prime Minister and also Yang di Pertuan Agong. It was almost as I could actually slap their back, but of course I didn’t do it, hey, I still love my job :)

However, I’m a little bit disappointed with the technology used. Lots of people/developers/vendors in the government still rely on non-open source software. Why should you pay when you can get it free? That’s what HUSM is trying to say in the event. We’ve developed our own software and save millions of ringgit, but of course, other managements don’t care, they think as long as they have the money, they’ll just spend it to the max. What they don’t realize is that some of the money that shouldn’t be spent in the first place could be used for other things. Now, imagine that mindset in each and every head of the department (including non-IT) in Malaysia. We could actually save billions and our IT people will gain knowledge more than ever.

I’m also surprised other IT Department didn’t bother to ask us much about the technologies that are being used in our applications. I mean, it’s not that weird if the end user didn’t ask what database that we use, but IT people ? Come on, it’s like a chef is not interested in asking about the recipe (ok, maybe a bad analogy there, but you should get my point).

Even though we just got small booth (read: very very small), I think we somehow manage to tell the people that HUSM is different. I’m looking forward to another event like this. Till then, enjoy the photos taken using Canon A710 at my Picasa Web Albums.

P/S: Thanks to MDeC for the invitation, we really appreciate it :)