1st public hospital with converged infrastructure in PHL to be set up in Davao

The Southern Philippines Medical Center (SPMC), Davao City’s largest public hospital, is collaborating with HP Philippines and Accent Micro to upgrade and modernize its data center and campus network infrastructure, becoming the first public hospital in the Philippines to have a fully converged IT infrastructure, HP Philippines announced Thursday.

Over the last few years, SPMC has been gradually digitizing its records and automating its system, and estimates that it is now 85 percent done.

The automated system is expected to integrate the different systems, create a centralized data storage with back-up for medical transactions, and provide hospital staff with mobile accessibility to electronic medical records and resources as needed.

The digitalization of records, automation of hospital services and overall upgrade of the hospital's IT infrastructure (from the servers to data storage, data backup and network) is expected to take around five years with a capital expenditure reaching P100 million, payable in five years through a lease-to-own agreement with HP.

Ryan Guadalquiver, managing director and general manager of Enterprise Business for HP Philippines says that by far this project with SPMC is their biggest for Mindanao.

SPMC Chief of Hospital Dr. Leopoldo Vega sees this project as an effective way of providing quality medical service for the disenfranchised, as well as a way to make public health systems all over the country sustainable.

“Imagine the X-ray department in most hospitals. Maintaining them usually costs a lot of money because you have to buy film, reagents to develop the film, and you have to allocate space for dark rooms and records," he pointed out.

"But when you digitize and automate that department, all you need is a computer and monitor. Doctors and patients can get their results as soon as it’s available. The hospital does not have to pay for film, reagents and space. Overall, that’s less cost, faster turnaround time, and better quality of medicine,” Vega added.

SPMC’s finance chief Barbara S. Cesar said that none of the facility's services was cut off or downgraded to pay for the upgrade.

“SPMC has been earning well (P1 billion yearly income) ever since the number of patients with Philhealth coverage increased to 42 percent from the 18 percent of patients covered five years ago," she said. "We also project that 80 percent of our patients will have Philhealth coverage, further increasing our revenue and capability to pay.”

Dr. Vega added that there would be no jobs lost with the upgrade, and that everyone currently working in the hospital is necessary to the system and would only become more efficient once they are trained to use the new facilities.

Accent Micro general manager and SVP for ICT Solutions Bong Paloma said that privacy and security issues are being addressed.

“We’re limiting the access to patient records to doctors," he said. “There’s also a health portal that the doctors have to access (to get the EMR), with internal security measures."

Paloma further explained: "For Phase 1, we’re limiting information access within the hospital network. So far there’s no law restricting EMR access to mobile so as the law matures our data structure can handle mobile access, so the doctor can access the health records anywhere, even in other clinics.”

SPMC is one of the biggest government-retained medical centers in the country with 600 beds. It is currently operating at 240-percent capacity.

In addition to the current infrastructure upgrade, the hospital has been slowly improving its facilities and purchasing new medical equipment, officials said. — BM, GMA News