Starting July 1, every resident of Ho Chi Minh City has an electronic health record integrated into the Ho Chi Minh City Digital Citizen app. The initiative marks an important milestone in the city's efforts to build a digital healthcare ecosystem, helping improve the quality of healthcare services for residents.
According to Deputy Director Nguyen Tran Phu Thinh of the Ho Chi Minh City Digital Transformation Center, creating an electronic health record for every resident has long been a key objective consistently pursued by the city's healthcare sector. In the past, residents' medical records were fragmented, existing either as paper examination forms or being stored separately at individual healthcare facilities. Patients often struggled to accurately recall their medication history, allergy records, or vaccination history when asked by doctors.
In response to this challenge, the Ho Chi Minh City Digital Transformation Center worked with the Ho Chi Minh City Department of Health to review and assess the city's existing digital platforms. Based on that assessment, the agencies advised the Ho Chi Minh City People's Committee to designate the Digital Citizen app as the platform for publishing electronic health records, ensuring compliance with standards and regulations on information security and cybersecurity.
The records are created by linking data from the Community Health Management Platform with medical examination and treatment data from electronic medical record systems at healthcare facilities. Instead of generating a separate record for each medical visit, all health information is continuously updated to form a unified lifelong health record for every resident.
The electronic health record enables residents to monitor and manage their health information anytime and anywhere using a smartphone. It also allows doctors and healthcare professionals to access patients' complete medical histories, including previous examinations and treatments. This improves diagnostic accuracy, reduces the time needed to collect patient information, minimizes duplicate medical orders, and enhances the quality of healthcare and treatment.
From the Government's management perspective, aggregated and analyzed health data will help the healthcare sector assess community health conditions and forecast disease trends. The information will support the development of disease prevention programs and the formulation of healthcare policies tailored to specific localities and population groups.
At the same time, access to electronic health records is provided through VNeID electronic identification accounts, ensuring that only authorized individuals can access the correct data while fully complying with regulations on personal data protection, cybersecurity, and digital transformation. The system allows users to access only their own health records, helping safeguard privacy and strengthen individuals' control over their personal data.
Residents should install the Ho Chi Minh City Digital Citizen app, proactively undergo regular health checkups, and create their own electronic health records to join the city in building a digital healthcare ecosystem for the benefit of public health, Deputy Director Nguyen Tran Phu Thinh said.
Citizens can use the e-health record system by following these steps:
* Step 1: Install or update the Ho Chi Minh City Digital Citizen application to the latest version.
* Step 2: Log in using each person's VNeID electronic identity account.
* Step 3: On the main screen, select Health → e-Health Record to look up your health information and examination results.
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