Health Ministry to Launch Integrated Digital Health Platform in July

TheIndonesia.co - Indonesian authorities are currently preparing a national digital health platform Indonesia Health Service (IHS) that will integrate all existing health apps in the country.

The Ministry of Health said IHS will coordinate about 400 of health applications that are currently in operation in Indonesia, so they will work integratively.

“There are currently 400 state-owned health applications that haven’t been integrated,” chief of digital transformation office at the Ministry Setiaji said on Monday, April 25, as reported by Antara.

He said the current practice makes data and information gathered to be different from one app to another. Furthermore, apps owned by private sectors, similarly, haven’t been integrated with national health service ecosystem.

“The non-uniformity of metadata makes interoperability difficult. Since there isn’t format standard for it, integration is done differently by each app,” Setiaji explained.

And IHS seeks to connect all players in the health ecosystem into the health industry at large, including hospitals, community health facilities, startups, pharmacies, health offices, labs, and others.

In its operation, IHS will provide standardized specification and mechanism for business process, data, technical side, and software security.

Setiaji also emphasized that each developer can use any programming language to develop their app as long as it meets the specification and mechanism for IHS Number’s data exchange that is designated as a single identity of patient’s health information to ensure user’s safety.

The initial stage of integration process will start with beta testing before IHS is planned to be widely launched in July this year.

“[We’re setting] gradual target. There are a lot of hospitals and other health facilities that don’t have patient’s electronic health record and still have it on papers. The target completion is three years,” Setiaji revealed.