Digital Transformation Journey
EMC Healthcare, operating under the brand name Sarana Meditama Metropolitan, has announced plans to upgrade to an AI-driven electronic medical record system just one year after completing its initial EMR implementation. This publicly-listed Indonesian healthcare group, which manages eight hospitals offering both basic and specialist health services, will become the first in the Asia-Pacific region to deploy this generative AI-powered system according to their vendor, InterSystems.
The healthcare digitalization landscape across Southeast Asia has been rapidly evolving, with Indonesia emerging as a key player in adopting advanced health information technologies. As one of the region’s largest healthcare markets, Indonesia’s digital transformation initiatives align with national goals to improve healthcare accessibility and quality through technological innovation.
The new system features automated documentation through ambient audio recording, prepopulated follow-up actions requiring only clinician review, and AI-assisted medical coding—representing a significant advancement in healthcare information technology for the region. This technological leap promises to address longstanding inefficiencies in clinical documentation while potentially reducing physician burnout, a growing concern in healthcare systems worldwide.
Overcoming Implementation Challenges
EMC Healthcare’s digital transformation began as a solution to standardization problems across its expanding network of acquired hospitals. Each facility previously operated independent, primarily paper-based health information systems that created numerous challenges for clinical staff, including cumbersome storage requirements, limited accessibility, constant risk of physical damage, inefficient information sharing, and virtually nonexistent data analysis capabilities.
“We started the EMR project in November 2021 when we signed the TrakCare EMR system implementation contract with InterSystems,” explained Jusup Halimi, president director of EMC Healthcare. The methodical rollout began with team recruitment and training, followed by requirements gathering across all facilities. The first hospital went live in December 2022, with subsequent implementations occurring every one to three months until completion in June 2024.
The implementation followed a carefully structured approach, with dedicated teams working across multiple hospitals simultaneously. This staggered deployment strategy allowed the organization to refine processes based on lessons learned from earlier implementations, creating a continuously improving model that enhanced adoption rates at subsequent facilities.
Alongside the EMR implementation, the healthcare group undertook an extensive digitization effort, converting over one million pages of medical records to digital format. This massive undertaking required specialized scanning equipment, quality control processes, and metadata tagging to ensure proper integration with the new EMR system.
Securing buy-in from approximately 700 specialist doctors represented the project’s greatest hurdle, requiring dedicated training and ongoing support from the implementation team. “Change management was crucial,” Halimi noted. “We established a superuser program where clinician champions helped drive adoption among their peers, significantly improving the transition experience.”
Embracing AI Innovation
For EMC Healthcare, implementing a standard EMR system was just the beginning. “AI is the future trend. If we don’t start using it, we will be left behind,” Halimi emphasized, explaining the company’s decision to pilot an AI-enhanced version of their EMR system.
The rapid evolution of generative AI technologies has created unprecedented opportunities in healthcare delivery, particularly in clinical documentation and decision support. EMC Healthcare recognized this potential early, positioning itself at the forefront of healthcare innovation in the region by partnering with InterSystems to implement these cutting-edge capabilities.
The healthcare group envisions integrating AI-powered clinical decision support tools that will deliver predictive analytics for patient risk stratification, personalized treatment recommendations based on comprehensive patient data, and proactive alerts for potential complications—capabilities that far exceed traditional rule-based systems.
“Our goal is to leverage AI not just for efficiency, but to fundamentally transform how clinicians interact with patient data,” Halimi explained. “When physicians spend less time documenting and searching for information, they can dedicate more attention to direct patient care and complex clinical decision-making.”
Strategic AI Applications
Following initial pilot testing, EMC Healthcare has identified three high-value areas for AI implementation: clinic consultation rooms, inpatient daily visits, and emergency department operations.
“AI can support doctors in accessing a comprehensive patient summary, something that traditionally required navigating across multiple charts and screens,” Halimi noted. “With AI, we can provide an intelligent patient overview that consolidates data from different sources into a single, structured summary, highlighting key clinical findings, observation trends, imaging reports, allergies, and recent diagnoses.”
This consolidated view enables physicians to grasp a patient’s complete clinical picture instantly, facilitating faster and more informed clinical decision-making.
Data-Driven Healthcare Future
Currently, EMC Healthcare utilizes a data warehouse system to store patient, medical, clinical, and financial information, with analytical tools providing visualization capabilities for monthly performance reviews at each hospital. This infrastructure forms the foundation for their AI ambitions.
“Our data warehouse already captures millions of clinical interactions and outcomes,” Halimi explained. “The next step is transforming this passive repository into an active intelligence system that generates insights automatically.”
The AI-driven EMR system will expand these capabilities, with plans to leverage data and AI for enhanced clinical decision support, workflow optimization, improved patient experiences, and medical research. The system will analyze patterns across patient populations to identify emerging health trends, potential public health concerns, and opportunities for preventative interventions.
“We have a medical research committee that could be more active with the help of AI,” Halimi shared. “For example, medical research using EMR data will be easier to do because the data is easier to obtain.” This research potential extends beyond individual facilities, potentially contributing to regional and national healthcare initiatives across Indonesia.
The implementation also addresses Indonesia’s unique healthcare challenges, including geographic dispersion across thousands of islands and varying levels of healthcare infrastructure. AI-driven systems could eventually support telemedicine initiatives and knowledge-sharing across EMC Healthcare’s network, enhancing care delivery in underserved areas.
Beyond AI capabilities, Halimi emphasized that successful EMR systems must feature user-friendly interfaces that enhance rather than disrupt clinical workflows. The ideal system “seamlessly integrates into the daily routines of physicians and nurses, minimizing clicks, and providing relevant information at the point of care without overwhelming the user.”
“The ultimate measure of success isn’t technological sophistication, but improved patient outcomes,” Halimi concluded. “Every feature we implement must contribute to better healthcare delivery.”
As EMC Healthcare continues its digital transformation journey, its pioneering implementation of AI-driven medical records systems positions it at the forefront of healthcare innovation in the Asia-Pacific region, potentially establishing new standards for healthcare delivery across Indonesia and beyond.
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