Siloam Hospitals Group's CEO Caroline Riady presented its digital transformation journey during the HIMSS Indonesian Digital Transformation Symposium on 25 May 2022 in Jakarta.

The group is one of Indonesia's leading healthcare providers. It operates 41 hospitals nationwide, some of which are in the eastern regions of Bali, East Nusa Tenggara, West Nusa Tenggara and Sulawesi. It had just four hospitals in 2010.

"[In 2016] we had not done digital transformation [yet], we had 26 hospitals with 16 different IT systems. With those 16 different IT systems, two out of those 16 were still DOS-based," Riady told the symposium.

"Very, very painful process"

According to Riady, the group began its digitisation process in 2016.

The group had to standardise more than a dozen IT systems and develop a single hospital information, financial and patient appointment system as the group's foundation.

She said the hospital group did not undergo user acceptance testing for some features but did it directly in a live environment. The billing – within its hospital information system – would only stabilise three months later. The group then had to do the same for 25 other hospitals.

"It was a very, very painful process … After the first hospital, we finally completed the last hospital's [standardisation] three years later," she told the symposium.

"But the good news: our future systems are a bit smarter, so [data] migration can be faster [and] people are more used to it."

Further digitisation

Riady said the group also worked on its ERP; the process finished last year. However, it then saw an "end of support" notice.

"If looking for a vendor, ask [when] the end of support is. Do not ask [about] it once finished," she said.

Riady said the digital transformation would cover the patient appointment, EMR, teleconsultation, human resources, doctors' clinical governance and CPOE aspects. The group also worked on a single queue system, streamlining patient queues from doctor consultations to pharmacies and laboratories.

Riady added said the final phase would be innovation as the hospital group would utilise technology and AI to enhance services and patient care.

She said the broader transformation process and digitisation had benefited the hospital group. One was online and offline seamlessness, whereas a patient could book a laboratory appointment online and have an offline medicine delivery without any hassle. It also allowed more open patient access and enabled the group to manage its operations using data more.

HIMSS' support

Riady was "very happy" with HIMSS' support for "giving a structure, standards and benchmark of what should be done", noting how Pondok Indah Hospital Group had achieved EMRAM Stage 6 in March – becoming the first Indonesian healthcare provider to do so.

"If [standards have been adopted] abroad, why should we trial and error again? We will just adopt them," she told the symposium.

"Unfortunately, Siloam is just at the very beginning, so it is hard for me to tell you what it will be like. But I am sure, later within a year, we will start to see the benefits that other hospitals have seen."