Title: Managing ICT resources for the improvement of health quality in China

Authors: Regis Cabral, Heston Kwong, Winnie Tang

Addresses: ICT-LEAP, Applied Physics and Electronics, Umea University SE-901 87 Umea, Sweden. ' Department of Health, 21/F., Wu Chung House, 213 Queen’s Road East, Wanchai, Hong Kong, China ' Chief Executive Officer ESRI, China (Hong Kong) Limited, GIS and Mapping Solutions, Level 10, Cyberport 2, 100 Cyberport Road, Hong Kong, China

Abstract: China is demonstrating her capabilities to address a major health crisis. ICT is one of the Chinese tools to extend health services to the whole country, even rural areas. Moreover, China can count on the exemplary Hong Kong management of geographical information systems (GIS) for health. This paper briefly illustrates the Chinese health effort, followed by a more detailed discussion of how Hong Kong’s ‘Policing Disease’ programme successfully coped with the SARS crisis. The management system used, the main institutional actors and the chronology are presented. In the conclusion, the paper discusses how this knowledge is spreading to other regions of China and to the world. Two of the authors were involved in the anti-SARS operations. Thus, the paper has also a primary source value.

Keywords: China; geographical information systems; GIS; healthcare technology; Hong Kong; ICT; information technology; communications; patient care; policing disease; SARS; severe acute respiratory syndrome; telemedicine; health quality; technology management.

DOI: 10.1504/IJHTM.2007.012107

International Journal of Healthcare Technology and Management, 2007 Vol.8 No.1/2, pp.5-19

Published online: 21 Jan 2007 *

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