“In order to improve the country's health service to a better level, the Ministry of Health is committed to ensuring that the electronic medical record system (EMR) can be realised within three years at 145 hospitals nationwide,” said Malaysian Health Minister Datuk Seri Dr Dzulkefly Ahmad.

He spoke to the media after the Luncheon Talk at Menara Razak, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) on 8 November 2018. Dr Dzulkefly added that 20 percent of the hospitals in Malaysia already have the EMR system in place, including Selayang Hospital and Ampang Hospital in Selangor but it is still not fully operational.

“We want to follow the best examples, such as in Turkey that have end-to-end solutions, good hospital information, and efficient track and trace for medicines that they have zero counterfeit (medicines).”

In a recent interview with HIMSS TV at the HIMSS Eurasia Conference in Istanbul, Dr Dzulkefly said, “It is important to me that I do not solve the problems (of healthcare) in a piecemeal manner but approach them methodologically. Until you as someone who is providing the leadership knows exactly what it takes to realise further infrastructure that needs to be there and of course together with infrastructure realising what change you would need to undertake and how your human resources can adapt to it by way of change management…then finally you would understand how the whole system would work.”

As the newly appointed Health Minister of Malaysia since May 2018, Dr Dzulkefly also said that it is important the leadership must have the grasp and understanding of hospital infrastructure as well as clinical outcomes – otherwise there will lots of government spending with no tangible improvements and problems will still be solved in a piecemeal manner.