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| 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.
