*** Welcome to piglix ***

Health informatics in China


Health informatics in China (Chinese: 医学信息学) is about the Health informatics or Medical informatics or Healthcare information system/technology in China.

The main review and assessment of health informatics in China for the WHO-Health Metrics Network was conducted in 2006 which details Provincial assessments, developing strategic plan outline, improving community health monitoring system, household surveys, routine health statistics system.

Due to the Health Informatization Development Plan, all hospitals are required to increase investment in building digitized hospitals. This requirement is expected to accelerate the growth of China's HIT market by about 25 to 30% a year during 2006-2010.

By the end of 2006, China’s investment in its healthcare information systems (HIS) had increased by nearly 16 percent to RMB 5.8 billion, year-on-year. This amount accounts for approximately 0.5% of the country’s total healthcare expenditures of RMB 866 billion during the same period.

The market size is expected to expand to approximately RMB 15 billion in 2010. The development of China’s HIT industry is generally considered to be at a preliminary stage, resembling that of western countries 20 years ago. However, as China learns more about available and emerging technologies, it now has the opportunity to leapfrog ahead.

China spent $97 billion, or 5.5% of its GDP, on healthcare in 2004. As previously stated, public spending on healthcare remains low; public spending in 2004 accounted for only 17% of total healthcare expenditure while out-of-pocket expenses reached 53.6%.

About 130 million people are covered under the National Social Insurance Program for Urban Employees, a program established in 2005. Another 50 million people are covered through government insurance. Yet less than 30% of the China’s population has medical insurance. Indeed, over 35% of the urban population and 50% of people in rural areas have no coverage at all.

China's current healthcare system is primarily composed of large public hospitals, supplemented by a small number of private, for-profit hospitals. As of 2005, there were 18,703 hospitals in China. Among them, 2,027 were private hospitals (10.83%). Chinese hospitals can be divided into three categories: general hospitals (70%), traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) hospitals (14%), and specialty hospitals (16%).


...
Wikipedia

...