Students from the Faculty of Public Health (FPH) Universitas Indonesia (UI) made another achievement at The 2nd Indonesian Public Health Olympiad (IPHO) 2023 which took place in August – November. IPHO is the Indonesian Public Health Olympiad organized by AIPTKMI (Association of Indonesian Public Health Higher Education Institutions). Nadya Arifta Auliazaki, Fania Nur Khoifatunisa, and Rina Febri Panjaitan are Regular Bachelor of Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) students at FPH UI who were crowned 2nd place winners in the Health Policy Analysis Competition in the trio team category at The 2nd IPHO. Carrying the theme “Shape Our Mind and Boost Our Curiosity to Strive Digital Public Health Competencies”, the final of The 2nd IPHO will be held on 8 – 9 November 2023 at FIK UIN Syarif Hidayatullah Jakarta.
Raising the topic “Optimizing Integrated Electronic Medical Records (EMRs) for Digital Health Services” in their work, the three OSH Regular Undergraduate students tried to raise one of the current issues that is currently hotly discussed. In this policy brief, Nadya, Fania, and Rina found problems in integrating Electronic Medical Records through the SATUSEHAT system which will be held no later than 31 December 2023. “Seeing these problems, we recommend several solutions, by collaborating together various stakeholders from various interdisciplinary disciplines to produce policies and regulations regarding data privacy, adopt blockchain technology, and provide training that pays attention to the three levels of health information technology, namely foundational, structural and semantic,” said Nadya. The importance of following technological developments has become an urgency to carry out health transformation, especially in the field of digital health services.
Integrating Electronic Medical Records is useful for facilitating coordination at health service facilities in documenting patient medical records that are accurate, up-to-date, comprehensive, and efficient so as to reduce the risk of medical errors. The Indonesian population has 270 million medical records in digital and paper form which are managed by thousands of individual-based health service providers in more than 400 management applications and spread across the central and regional levels. Problems related to infrastructure and limited health human resources can be minimized by providing training that pays attention to interoperability aspects so that information transfer can still pay attention to quality control. The interoperability aspect must pay attention to 3 levels of information technology, namely foundational, structural, and semantic. By implementing optimization on this problem, the implementation of EMRs can run more optimally and comprehensively. Integrating Electronic Medical Records can provide easy access to patient health data thereby improving coordination in providing health services. From these problems, policy recommendations can be made that can be implemented. The first problem regarding standardization of EMR integration can be done in collaboration with relevant stakeholders. The expected results are policies and regulations relating to data privacy through the specification of encryption standards, access controls and instructions relating to patient personal information.
This competition event at IPHO was the first experience for Nadya, Fania and Rina. Choosing this topic is also a new challenge for them as OSH undergraduate students who have to discuss health issues more broadly and specifically to public health policy, different from what is learned in courses in the field of occupational safety and health. However, the supervisor, Abdul Kadir, S.K.M., M.Sc., or who is usually called Kak Ading, was very supportive and helped Nadya and the team a lot in the process of this competition.
Dr. Ir. Asih Setiarini, M.Sc., Deputy Dean for Education, Research and Student Affairs at FPH UI also expressed his pride in the achievements made by his students at FPH. “I think the topic proposed is appropriate to current conditions. In the era of digitalization, all aspects of life have been digitized, including various things in the health sector. This digitalization aims to make our work easier, with the integration of Electronic Medical Records in the SATUSEHAT system, it is hoped that it can become an instrument that can make things easier for users of health service facilities. Because all the data is already there, you can cut down on the journey to get the service you want. So, the solutions that service users want can be quickly obtained in a comprehensive manner because all data is on one platform. “It is hoped that this can also improve existing health services and human health resources,” concluded Dr. Asih. (DFD)