Malaysia: Reducing workloads and improving outcomes

Bagan Specialist Centre’s Managing Director Dr Tan Hui Ling shares how technologies, such as automated warning systems, are speeding up the detection of patient health deterioration, saving lives and enabling healthcare staff to do more with less amidst growing workloads.

Since the implementation, we’ve seen three key benefits.

The first is improved patient outcomes – Code Blue incidences and unexpected deaths have reduced by more than 50%, thanks to earlier detection and intervention.

A second benefit is increased compliance. Because connected care technology can simultaneously monitor and automate the steps required to manually check a patient’s vital signs, human errors are reduced.

Finally, by automating the monitoring process, we have been able to free up the time of our nurses to be re-allocated to other high-value tasks where they can make the most difference. Going digital also allows our healthcare workers to be less desk-bound with the use of an app that sends critical alerts directly to the mobile phone.

Over time we believe the collection of data through the automated monitoring process has the potential to help hospitals better predict and respond to demand. This insight is invaluable; with it, hospital management can better prepare and allocate resources around peak points.

With patient numbers only expected to increase in coming years, technology – rather than headcount – is likely to make the biggest difference to workload and productivity issues as well as quality care issues. Hospital management should innovate and train frontline staff to use technology to streamline their care process to improve patient outcomes and hence patient satisfaction. 

[1] Case Study on the Role of Services Trade in Global Value Chains: Health and Medical Services in Malaysia, Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, February 2017

[2] Future Health Index 2018 Study by Philips