THE Department of Health is implementing a project to computerise hospital medical records and statistics.

“Effective public health care depends heavily on accurate medical records at hospitals in the states and divisions,” the manager of the department’s quality care at hospitals program, Dr Kyaw Linn, told Myanmar Times.

He was speaking on the sidelines of a computer training course for 25 medical records staff from hospitals in Yangon and Mandalay division on May 2.

The 18-day course, which is being funded by the World Health Organisation, is being held at the Department of Health Planning’s offices on Thein Byu Road.

The course is for the software that operates the medical records system.

Dr Kyaw Linn said that comprehensive medical records and statistics would help the Health Ministry to plan projects and drug supply management.

“We must know what diseases the public are suffering from, what sort of cases are emerging or reemerging and we can get that information only from hospital medical records,” he said. Dr Kyaw Linn said that the system will replace the use of hard copy records.

“There are 804 hospitals in the country and 44 are using the system,” he said.