Vietnam hospitals at the early stages of going digital

Meanwhile, 100% of public hospitals have installed hospital information systems as of July 2019.

In a paper released by YCP Solidiance on March 2020, called A Look Forward: How Digitalization is Transforming Vietnam's Healthcare System, Vietnam's private hospitals are in the early stages of implementing innovations such as health information systems, electronic medical records, telemedicine, artificial intelligence, and robotics. These goals aim to increase their value and market position due to increasing competition with foreign hospital entrants.

Private hospitals such as Hoan My Hospital, Victoria Healthcare, and Vinmec Hospital operate as chains. They have incentivized the continuous upgrade of their digital infrastructure to effectively manage the hospital branches and reinforce their status of international standards.

However, the three main challenges impeding Vietnam's hospitals in further digital adoption are limited digital capabilities of healthcare professionals and patients due to financial constraints, unclear and complicated administrative processes, and system integration, given limited data conformity and cybersecurity issues.

In addition, health identification, a prerequisite to medical health records, remains a challenge. The Ministry of Health has only introduced the creation, usage, and management guidelines for health ID numbers last September 2019.