THE Department of Health recently announced plans to expand digital health interventions to address inefficiencies in the health system and improve health services.
In a virtual town hall discussion on “Enabling Health Solutions and Innovations to Improve the Philippine Public Health System,” DOH Director for Knowledge Management and Information Technology Service Dr. Enrique Tayag presented updates on Philippine health interventions to participants from the pharmaceutical industry, health advocacy groups and other stakeholders.
“We want a better improved patient experience. What the pandemic has taught (us) is that access to health services need not be physical or face-to-face. There are interventions that we can actually make use of like Tele-Medicine so that inappropriate hospital admission or overuse of procedures can actually be screened over virtual consultations,” Tayag said in the forum organized by the Stratbase Albert Del Rosario Institute.
Tayag said the DOH digital transformation will focus on Information Systems, Registries for Health priorities, Infrastructure & Connectivity, Telehealth services, Electronic Medical Records, e-Supply Chain Management, and Skilled human resources for ICT.
“It (Digital Health) will support many endeavors to achieve universal health coverage. It will ultimately reduce the cost for health services,” Tayag said.
In the same forum, Dr. Beaver Tamesis, President of the Pharmaceutical Healthcare Association of the Philippines, said, “It’s really important that our processes must be much more agile. Right now, it feels a bit difficult. We have to really intervene all the time with the powers that be.
“We need to streamline a lot of these processes. Let’s put together already systems so that we can allow the quick entry of these treatments assuming they actually would be efficacious and actually work,” Tamesis said.
Stratbase ADRi President Prof Dindo Manhit said: “Health is the Filipino people’s most urgent personal concern. Millions of households are now struggling because of the disruptive effects of this health crisis.”
