The centre is tasked with managing and operating resources and professional activities to support health clinics in receiving, quarantining, diagnosing and treating COVID-19 patients directly or online.
Speaking at the ceremony, Deputy Health Minister Nguyen Thanh Long said that Vietnam is well controlling the COVID-19, with no fatalities and no infected health workers recorded so far.
However, it is necessary to anticipate possible situations of a large-scale outbreak with many serious cases, Long stated, adding that the birth of the centre aims to provide professional support for lower-level hospitals and health clinics, especially in far-flung areas.
Through the support of information technology, experts and doctors at the central level can see patients as well as medical parameters and conditions of patients and their health developments from respiration and electrocardiogram so that they can make recommendations on mechanical ventilation and infusion for lower-level colleagues.
One of the problems of the disease is that the longer of time the caregiver comes into contact with the patient, the higher the infection rate is. Therefore, the centre is expected to help reduce the contact between health workers and patients, Long stated.
Director of the Health Ministry’s Department for Medical Examination and Treatment Luong Ngoc Khue said that the application of information technology in telemedicine will help improve the medical system’s capacity of dealing with the disease.
In case a health clinic records a COVID-19 patient, the telemedicine centre will provide professional support for the clinic to avoid the unnecessary transfer of the patient to the upper-level hospital, Khue added.
The telemedicine centre is able to connect with 23 key disease prevention places and over 1,400 hospitals across Vietnam. It uses various smart medical solutions, including teleconferencing, electronic medical records, and the cloud-based Picture Archiving and Communication System (Cloud PACS).
On this occasion, the Department for Medical Examination and Treatment released a set of documents to serve COVID-19 diagnosis and treatment.
