SPMC signs deal with HP, AMT to automate hospital

HP Philippines Managing Director Ryan Guadalquiver

Davao City-The Southern Philippines Medical Center (SPMC) signed Thursday a deal with Hewlett-Packard (HP) Philippines and Accent Micro Technologies (AMT) to pave the way for the full automation of the hospital’s system in a span of five years.

“This is a five-year financial agreement on lease purchase that will be paid by the hospital gradually on a monthly basis to help us fully automate and digitalize the hospital,” SPMC Chief of Hospital Dr. Leopoldo Vega said during the signing held at the Marco Polo Hotel yesterday.

SPMC Chief Finance Office Barbara Cesar said the SPMC has conducted a public bidding for a company that can provide computers, infrastructure and backup on a lease to purchase basis considering the hospital’s meager resources.

“Through this partnership, we will be able to help SPMC respond to its IT requirements to support the expansion and growth it is undergoing,” HP Philippines Managing Director Ryan Guadalquiver said.

Unknown to many consumers, HP does not only sell Personal Computers and Laptops but it is also the largest solutions provider in the healthcare industry.

Vega said SPMC is a 600-bed hospital with a 200-percent or 1,200 occupancy rate. With this volume coupled with the hospital’s meager budget, he added, the only way to make hospital operation more efficient is through automation.

He said SPMC along with Segworks has embarked on developing applications for the various divisions including admission, billing, laboratory, documents and records.

“The applications developer has been with us for five years and around 85 percent of the modules have been developed,” he said. SPMC and AMT’s partnership with SPMC is good timing sine we already have the applications but we need a good infrastructure and system to implement that, he added.

Vega noted the development of the x-ray department which has for years, been running on analog with the use of films and reagents to develop a single chest x-ray. With the digitalization of the xray department today, he added, the hospital can capture the medical image of a patient just like a digital camera without film and reagents.

“What we need is to invest in software and computer that can produce the image on s screen with quick turnaround,” he said.

In five years time, he said, the hospital will be highly automated such that even the medical records of the patient including the address and other data will all be managed by the hospital so there is no need to fill out forms with the same information whenever patients have to go to the hospital.

“The vision is for the doctors to be able to look at patient information even without driving to the hospital because they can just check these records in their android phones,” he said.

Vega said they have started to convert patient records in digital format in preparation for the hospital’s automation plan.