Improving remote medical examination and treatment through the software "Doctor for every home"

On July 20, the Ministry of Health in collaboration with the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) in Vietnam organized a workshop on the results of implementing the remote medical consultation and treatment program at grassroots health facilities using the software "Doctor for every home".

The "Doctor for Every Family" software was developed jointly by UNDP and the Department of Information Technology (Ministry of Health ) since December 2020. The implementation process has gone through two phases: Software development and testing in Ha Giang, Bac Kan and Lang Son provinces from 2021 to 2022. Based on the positive results and lessons learned from this initial phase, phase 2 was implemented in 5 provinces: Thua Thien Hue, Quang Ngai, Binh Dinh, Dak Lak and Ca Mau.

This software is a bridge connecting medical staff at commune health stations with medical units at district and higher levels, helping to provide effective consultation and treatment guidance. The program has a video call feature, supporting meetings or professional activities. The software also has a user-friendly smartphone application, empowering people in the local community, including ethnic minorities and people with disabilities, to access comprehensive health care services.

Since November 2022, the "Doctor for Every Family" software has been installed and deployed at 1,403 provincial, district and commune-level health facilities in 5 provinces, all of which are seamlessly connected to the Ministry of Health's Data Center. The program has also set up remote medical consultation and treatment rooms at 75 high-risk commune health stations by equipping 75 sets of desktop computers, webcams, microphones and speakers with good quality to ensure effective remote medical consultation and treatment services.

The program has achieved impressive results from people in the community, with 755,000 citizen accounts created, and approximately 28,000 appointment requests booked through the system as of June 2023.

One of the main highlights of this project is to help control epidemics, reduce overload at upper-level medical facilities, and improve the quality of medical examination and treatment at lower-level facilities.

According to Prof. Dr. Tran Van Thuan, Deputy Minister of Health, this unit will continue to coordinate with UNDP to mobilize resources to implement the digital transformation program for health, complete the targets of the new rural and advanced new rural programs under the management of the Ministry of Health, towards managing people's health in the digital environment and continue to prioritize capacity building activities for grassroots health care.

Ms. Ramla Khalidi, UNDP Resident Representative in Vietnam, said: UNDP places high priority on supporting Vietnam's National Digital Transformation Roadmap to 2025 and Vision to 2030, including digital transformation in healthcare.

The long-term goal is to support the development of a nationwide telehealth system at the grassroots level. UNDP is working with the Ministry of Health, provinces and other partners in Viet Nam to mobilize additional resources to support expansion to more provinces, as well as to continue developing the legal and policy framework for the telemedicine programme.

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