HONG KONG/LEIPZIG, Germany :Malaysia Healthcare, a medical tourism facilitator in Malaysia, is offering a medical record storage device to foreign medical tourists and domestic patients who wish to go abroad for treatment. The Individual Personal Health Electronic Record (iPHER) USB device, which is produced by a US company based in Florida, is able to carry basic patient data, such as blood type, allergies and dental records. It allows medical professionals to access a patient's medical history quickly.
Physicians and dentists in Malaysia and most Asian countries are currently not required to store their patient's medical data in digital format. Malaysia Healthcare is the first provider to offer such a service to patients in Malaysia. At a medical tourism congress in Kuala Lumpur last month, CEO Suresh Ponnudurai told reporters that his company is offering the iPHER device because of the low Internet penetration rate in many parts of South East Asia. A self-contained device like the iPHER can make patient records accessible in places without Internet connectivity, he added.
Digital storage of medical records is increasingly becoming big business in the health care sector as broadband Internet becomes available in more parts of the world. Computing companies like Microsoft and Google already offer web-based platforms that can store and exchange medical records and data. Data protection specialists, however, have warned against the massive outsourcing of medical record transcription and storage, which has the potential to violate patient–physician confidentiality by allowing unauthorised persons access to critical patient data.
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