Vietnam’s EMR push faces significant headwinds

Despite the rapid advancement of digital transformation across Vietnam, the nationwide push for Electronic Medical Records (EMRs) is, according to numerous experts, encountering significant headwinds, particularly at the local level.

These hurdles aren’t just technical. According to Director Nguyen Ngo Quang of the Ministry of Health’s Department of Science, Technology and Training, the challenges stem as much from the mindset of hospital leadership and the IT proficiency of medical staff as they do from infrastructure and inconsistent financial mechanisms.

For a mid-sized facility, the road to a paperless system is paved with substantial costs. It is a massive undertaking that demands heavy investment in everything from software and data storage to workstations, digital signatures, and robust network systems.

And that’s before factoring in the ongoing expenses for staff training, software maintenance, and daily operations. For hospitals that are financially autonomous, mobilizing the necessary capital for these upgrades presents a formidable challenge.

This sentiment is echoed by leaders at many other hospitals. They acknowledge that while they have had medical information systems for years, they haven’t met the technical and legal prerequisites to officially go paperless.

This is a common story when their IT systems are outdated and can’t handle the ballooning data loads, and their IT teams, often lacking specific experience in the medical field, struggle to keep pace with the complex implementation schedule.

Adding another layer of complexity, many senior doctors aren’t accustomed to reading patient files on a computer screen, creating a cultural barrier to adoption.

Furthermore, the procurement process itself is a bureaucratic maze. Hospitals must put out bids for EMR equipment and software, but with no official technical-economic guidelines to establish a baseline price, determining a fair value is incredibly difficult. For financially independent hospitals already stretched thin, the enormous cost of EMR implementation can feel like a mountain too high to climb. SGGP