Latest eHealth publicity to encourage citizen's self-management of personal health with mobile application (with photos)
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Introduced in 2016, the Electronic Health Record Sharing System (eHealth) allows citizens to store their personal health records on an electronic platform which connects various healthcare service providers in the public and private sectors. Individual healthcare service provider may view and share electronic health records of the citizen concerned with his or her consent for the citizen to enjoy continued healthcare services. Apart from the public hospitals and clinics, all the 13 local private hospitals and about 2 800 other private healthcare organisations are also registered healthcare service providers of the eHealth. As at the end of May this year, over 3 billion medical records of more than 5.7 million citizens (viz. about 80 per cent of the population) have been shared on eHealth and over 2.9 million of downloads via its mobile application were also recorded since its launch.
A spokesman of the HHB said, "eHealth is a privacy protected, personal life-long electronic health record. It can ensure that patients and healthcare service providers may view and share digital medical data of health records on a secured electronic platform without any worries."
The eHealth has been enriched with new features from time to time and its mobile application is in place for members of the public to record and manage their own health condition, including medical appointments, uploading of vaccination records, and self-record of own blood pressure, blood sugar and heart rate. The HHB is also exploring to cover test results relating to blood pressure, blood lipids and blood sugar in the eHealth mobile application. The HHB has just revamped the interface of eHealth mobile application this March. The new interface enables users to customise according to their user habits and needs the access to an array of health information and part of their own health records such as vaccination records, medication, appointments, allergies, adverse drug reactions as well as Elderly Health Care Voucher balance at a glance. The eHealth App supports iOS, Android and Huawei mobile devices.
To encourage registration with eHealth and provide users with more convenience in adopting the mobile app as a handy daily tool to monitor their own health, the HHB launched a fresh round of publicity. On top of the premiere show of TV and radio APIs tonight, the eHealth mobile truck will visit some 30 locations across the city (see the Annex) from this Saturday (June 17) onwards to assist members of the public to register with eHealth. Staff on site will help participants to download the mobile application and introduce to them the many features of the mobile application. Body mass index (BMI) and blood pressure measurement services will also be provided on the spot with staff guiding citizens to input the data in the eHealth mobile application. No appointment or charge is required for joining the event and eHealth souvenirs will be distributed on a first-come-first-serve basis.
Looking ahead, the HHB will leverage such an extensive healthcare user base built via the eHealth over the years to establish further collaboration with private healthcare institutions in uploading healthcare data. The move aims at transforming eHealth from a basic health record sharing system across different healthcare service providers into a comprehensive infrastructure underpinning different tiers and sectors supporting the overall healthcare system, thereby ensuring delivery of continuous healthcare for individuals.
The spokesman added, "To this end, the Government is working to transform eHealth into a comprehensive and integrated healthcare information infrastructure with a patient-centric perspective under the guiding principle of 'one patient, one health record' so that the upgraded eHealth will serve as the backbone for supporting the healthcare development."
Taken into account the views of various stakeholders, the Government will launch beta projects with healthcare IT solution partners in order to deepen the understanding on actual operational needs, foster technical exchanges and cooperation and garner more practical experience, with a view to laying a solid foundation in the technical aspect for data sharing and enhancement of further integration between private healthcare IT systems and the eHealth.
More information on eHealth can be found on its designated website: www.ehealth.gov.hk/en/index.html.
Ends/Thursday, June 15, 2023
Issued at HKT 20:45
Issued at HKT 20:45
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