The Indonesian Hospital Association or PERSI has entered into a three-year collaborative agreement with HIMSS to work on capacity building, workforce development and IT awareness projects by engaging stakeholders across Indonesia's health ecosystem. The partnership will be in effect until July 2024.

WHAT IT'S ABOUT

Founded in 1978, PERSI is an independent, non-profit umbrella organisation of 18 hospital associations in Indonesia. 

Under the partnership, HIMSS and PERSI will assess the digital maturity of hospitals across the country. A pilot project will see PERSI choosing a participant hospital; HIMSS will then conduct a comprehensive assessment of the hospital's current state of digital maturity using its Maturity Models and Digital Health Indicator.

The organisations will also jointly develop localised speciality workshops for healthcare professionals. HIMSS will impart international learnings and benchmarks while PERSI will share its expertise in the local market. The former will also provide access to its international content for broader learning.

WHY IT MATTERS

PERSI is the first organisation from Indonesia to join HIMSS' global member network of more than 100,000 individual members, 650 corporate members, 480 organisational affiliates and 470 non-profit partners. 

PERSI noted that one of the objectives of the digital maturity assessment project is to identify key priorities for inpatient digital action in the short term for hospitals; it will also help them design an inpatient digital hospital roadmap. 

Additionally, PERSI's collaboration with HIMSS provides them with an opportunity to participate in regional dialogues around healthcare policy where they can share their expertise and insights to provide perspectives from Indonesia.

To mark their partnership, HIMSS will be holding its annual HIMSS APAC conference in Jakarta for the first time in 2022.

ON THE RECORD

"We are confident that this collaboration will actively support the hospital community in widely performing quality information technology for hospital care improvement. With increased capacity, PERSI and the hospital community can contribute greater input for the formulation of best standard development within the national policy framework," said Dr Widyastuti Wibisana, head of the Institute of International Relations at PERSI.

"Recently, significant investments have been made by global tech giants and investors into digital tech in Indonesia and this is supported by the government's efforts to make its investment environment favourable through strong regulatory form. With these developments, the nation's health system is poised now more than ever for digital transformation to enable better healthcare delivery and improved patient outcomes. HIMSS is honoured to be able to partner with PERSI to advance the digitisation of the nation's health system and their key role in the Indonesian health ecosystem will be critical to this partnership," HIMSS Asia-Pacific VP Simon Lin also said.