The Malaysian Telemedicine initiative advocates a paradigm shift in healthcare delivery patterns by way of implementing a person-centred and wellness-focused healthcare system. This paper introduces the Malaysian Telemedicine vision, its functionality and associated operational conditions. In particular, we focus on the conceptualisation of one key Telemedicine component i.e. the Lifetime Health Plan (LHP) system--a distributed multimodule application for the periodic monitoring and generation of health-care advisories for all Malaysians. In line with the LHP project, we present an innovative healthcare delivery info-structure--LifePlan--that aims to provide life-long, pro-active, personalised, wellness-oriented healthcare services to assist individuals to manage and interpret their health needs. Functionally, LifePlan based healthcare services are delivered over the WWW, packaged as Personalised Lifetime Health Plans that allow individuals to both monitor their health status and to guide them in healthcare planning.
Matched MeSH terms: National Health Programs/trends*
This article reviews the epidemiology, rehabilitation intervention strategies, and rehabilitation resources for persons with disabilities (PWD) in Malaysia. Currently, the registered number of PWD is 409,269 individuals, 1.3% of the total population, which is far less than the World Health Organization estimation of 10%. The rehabilitation implementation strategies include health policies, health promotion, and prevention programs. Health-related services for PWD are provided by many government agencies, including health, welfare, education, manpower, housing, and the private sector and nongovernment organizations. It is hoped national health programs can ensure special care and rehabilitation for PWD, optimizing self-reliance and social integration.
Matched MeSH terms: National Health Programs/trends*
Medical tourism occupies different spaces within national policy frameworks depending on which side of the transnational paradigm countries belong to, and how they seek to leverage it towards their developmental goals. This article draws attention to this policy divide in transnational healthcare through a comparative bibliometric review of policy research on medical tourism in select source (Canada, United States and United Kingdom) and destination countries (Mexico, India, Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore), using a systematic search of the Web of Science (WoS) database and review of grey literature. We assess cross-national differences in policy and policy research on medical tourism against contextual policy landscapes and challenges, and examine the convergence between research and policy. Our findings indicate major disparities in development agendas and national policy concerns, both between and among source and destination countries. Further, we find that research on medical tourism does not always address prevailing policy challenges, just as the policy discourse oftentimes neglects relevant policy research on the subject. Based on our review, we highlight the limited application of theoretical policy paradigms in current medical tourism research and make the case for a comparative policy research agenda for the field.
Matched MeSH terms: National Health Programs/trends*