In the emergency room, time is often more valuable than medicine. A\ndelay of just a few minutes can determine whether a patient receives\nimmediate treatment or must be shuttled from one hospital to another\nbecause the wards are full. This problem is not merely a matter of\nservice capacity, but also of disconnected information.<\/p>\n
The city of Surabaya, East Java, is now attempting to address this\nchallenge through a fundamental step: unifying health data. The\nmunicipal government has integrated 69 hospitals into the Surabaya\nHealth One Data system, enabling real-time monitoring of bed\navailability, healthcare personnel, ambulances, and overall service\ncapacity. Simultaneously, electronic medical records from community\nhealth centres and hospitals are being consolidated into a connected\nsystem.<\/p>\n
This seemingly simple idea reflects a major shift in how health\nservices are perceived. For years, hospitals, community health centres,\nand the government operated with their own separate datasets.\nConsequently, critical decisions often relied on manual reports,\ntelephone calls, or even rough estimates. Yet public health challenges\nare growing increasingly complex. Indonesia is undergoing an\nepidemiological transition where infectious diseases have not yet been\nfully eradicated, while non-communicable diseases such as diabetes,\nhypertension, heart disease, and cancer continue to rise. This situation\ndemands a health system capable of reading changes swiftly, rather than\nmerely reacting when hospitals are already overwhelmed.<\/p>\n
The World Health Organization (WHO) identifies health information\nsystems as one of the main pillars for strengthening health services.\nMeanwhile, the Ministry of Health, through its SatuSehat platform, is\nbuilding a national health data integration system to make services more\nefficient and sustainable. In this context, Surabaya\u2019s initiative is\nnoteworthy because it translates national policy into practice that is\ncloser to the needs of its citizens.<\/p>", "url": "https:\/\/jawawa.id\/newsitem\/one-data-saves-lives-surabaya-integrates-health-information-to-build-a-smarter-city-1782629509", "image": "" }, "sponsor": "Okusi Associates", "sponsor_url": "https:\/\/okusiassociates.com" }