THE Chinese General Hospital and Medical Center (CGH) recently selected Amazon Web Services (AWS) to modernize and digitize its health data infrastructure and operations.
Jamie Francis Dy, vice president of information and communications technology and data privacy officer of the medical institution, told reporters in a recent webinar that choosing AWS in its digital transformation has given the 144-year-old hospital “new capability and experience to accelerate things to where we want to go.”
“It also increased our momentum to clear our data system that enabled us to reconcile it with government policies,” Dy added. Dy said AWS also enabled the institution to craft a healthy ecosystem that has diverse applications covering security, data management and cloud-based applications. He added it was critical to acquire the capabilities of the cloud-based AWS for its mission-critical applications to develop a holistic view of the health situation.
“When we launched our mail and web hosting server, we were able to reduce patient discharge from five to 10 hours to 10 minutes,” Dy pointed.
He stressed the importance of having AWS specially during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic. By having AWS as the core of its digital infrastructure, Dy said the hospital achieved significant benefits such as reduction of time in discharging the patients.
Dy said the staff of the medical center increased its productivity by 60 percent with the introduction of medicine and the digital apps. Moreover, it also introduced an app exclusively for Covid-19 patients to ensure a smooth processing regarding their treatment.
“CGH also launched telecommunications services as a quick response to the Covid-19 pandemic,” he said.
Prior to going to AWS, Dy said CGH experienced a lot of challenges from the previous vendor because it failed to make the computerization program go live in six months. When AWS took over, the computer system went live in a week’s time.
“Before AWS came in, CGH spent a lot on servers and hardware but to no avail,” Dy pointed out.
“Technology has an invisible role in CGH. AWS makes it easier for us right now. Doctors can now perform CT scan using mobile phone technology and they can now use technology to transfer patients to the hospital. Through AWS, CGH can now offer services such as picture archiving and communication, laboratory information system, document management system, and SAP/HANA enterprise resource planning applications.