Health D-G: Patients’ personal details not in MyHDW

PUTRAJAYA: Patients’ personal details such as names and addresses will not be disclosed to the Malaysian Health Data Warehouse (MyHDW), Health director-general Datuk Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah assures the public.

He said that only information pertaining to health will be retrieved from hospitals and clinics for MyHDW.

“The names are all blank (blanked out). It is only the health information that we want, such as the disease and treatment.

“That is why we call it a health data warehouse – there is no individual information there.

“We are not interested in the individual or the address,” he clarified when asked about the process of data collection by MyHDW at the ministry.

Developed jointly by the ministry and Mimos Bhd, MyHDW compiles data from various public and private healthcare facilities nationwide, including university and military hospitals.

The current first phase contains data from 2.5 million in-patients of government and military hospitals and daycare unit services.

More data will be collected from patients in other healthcare facilities in the second phase.

Dr Noor Hisham said on Facebook that the patients’ medical records stay with their respective hospitals and doctors.

Patients will not be identifiable from the data contained in MyHDW, so their confidentiality is protected, he said, adding that MyHDW does not violate the Personal Data Protection Act.

Data collection from private healthcare facilities is compliant with clauses in the Private Healthcare Facilities and Services Act 1998.

“Furthermore, this health data is not shared with insurance companies or third parties. Data sharing is regulated by the ministry’s Health Informatics Centre and Data and Information Governance Committee,” he said.

Some general health informatics, however, may be made public, he explained.

Dr Noor Hisham added that MyHDW, which utilises the services of qualified professionals expert at managing and analysing big data, is an asset to the ministry.

Dr Noor Hisham said the system cannot be easily hacked.

He hoped that in future, the health data can be overlaid with information on the environment to find out the health condition of the nation in particular circumstances.