VOI - Voice of Indonesia | RRI - Radio Republik Indonesia

Minister of Health, Budi Gunadi Sadikin, has said he will push the use of digital technology for developing health services, and particularly for integrating health data available across platforms.

He said he got the idea after studying how US biotechnology startups are creating new vaccines and drugs using Big Data and the Internet of Things (IoT)

“Big data and IoT will change the landscape of healthcare. Our initiatives can be grouped into several things, first, health data, second, application, and third, the ecosystem," Sadikin informed at the virtual launch of the World Bank Indonesia Digital Report in Jakarta on Thursday.

He said his ministry will seek to integrate data on routine public health checks in hospitals and digital treatment platforms, medicines, and health activities recorded by smartwatches.

"So, what we plan to do from this regulation is to determine how the data that I mentioned earlier can be legally owned by two parties. First, online and offline health facilities such as hospitals or pharmacies, and by the individuals," he elaborated.

According to Sadikin, the government will formulate standard requirements so that the data can be accessed by interested parties.

"So, if people want to go to the doctor, the system can give doctors the right to access data of people stored on watches, pharmacies, and hospitals instantly," he said.

However, the government will seek permission to use the data, he informed. Through this initiative, health workers will have full access to individual health data, he pointed out.

"With this, we can use artificial intelligence to create a security mechanism or sandbox where there are more than 200 million Indonesian people's data," he said.

The data can then be used to determine how the government can improve the quality of public health, Sadikin noted.

“Currently there are 11 telemedicine start-ups that offer remote health consultations. We have identified how they carry out online diagnostics related to user-health risks, which are identified from the results of patient laboratory examinations, as well as conversations via WhatsApp and Facebook," he said. (Antaranews)