From Dr C. Farrugia LL.D.
We have been instructed by our clients, AME International GmbH of Vienna, Austria, to refer to the article written by David Lindsay, under the title “Press reports plague Mater Dei IT System decision” (TMIS, 13 August).
Our clients cannot accept the statements made in their regard in the said report and therefore wish to clarify these same allegations, both for the benefit of your readers as well as to rectify the damage to their reputation these allegations may have caused.
The AME-led total hospital information systems implemented at the Selayang Hospital for the Ministry of Health of Malaysia was successfully and punctually commissioned on 1999. This was expressly confirmed, after the expiry of the two-year warranty period and the positive completion of the AME contract period, in a letter dated 15 November 2001 sent to our clients by the director of Selayang Hospital, Dr Rosnah.
The successful completion of this project was further confirmed in the recent hospital report issued by the Ministry of Health of Malaysia, which stated: “In a case study report on Hospital Selayang in 2002, three years after it started service, user satisfaction survey indicated widespread approval of this, where 64 per cent to 71 per cent of the users rated the IT work process as being very good to excellent. More significantly, 93 per cent of those surveyed indicated they preferred working in a paperless environment versus a traditional paper-based hospital.”
Our client’s e90 million hospital IT project in South Africa is a true long-term strategic partnership contract (for 15 years) and has been operating successfully for four years now.
AME is a hospital IT integrator and not a software supplier (such as iSoft). It was therefore completely misleading and inaccurate for your report to compare the number of installations carried out by iSoft to that carried out by AME. If any comparisons had to be made in this respect, it would have been more meaningful and instructive to refer to the number of installations carried out worldwide by AME’s software supplier, that is, by Siemens.
Siemens Medical Solutions of Siemens AG (NYSE: SI), with its headquarters in Malvern, Pennsylvania, USA and Erlangen, Germany, is one of the largest suppliers to the worldwide healthcare industry. The company is known for bringing together innovative medical technologies, healthcare information systems, management consulting, and support services, to help customers achieve tangible and sustainable, clinical and financial results. Employing approximately 33,000 people in more than 120 countries, Siemens Medical Solutions has been a leader in the healthcare IT industry for nearly 35 years and has delivered health information solutions to over 5,000 healthcare organisations worldwide.
For the sake of accuracy, our clients also wish to point out that the “AME Consortium” bid for the Mater Dei Hospital IT system was submitted by a consortium led by AME International GmbH, Austria, consisting of INSO S.A., Italia and Intercomp Ltd, with Siemens Ag, Oracle and HP as technology partners and Megabyte as main sub-contractor.
Christian Farrugia
Farrugia Schembri Orland
VALLETTA
Editor’s note:
Although AME International points to a complimentary letter written in 2001 and a Selayang Hospital case study carried out in 2002, it should be noted that the report we referred to, Stuck in the cyber web, was published on 19 November 2003 by Malaysian daily The Star. This report can be viewed free of charge on: www.pcdom.org.my/discforum/pdf/Stuck%20in%20the%20cyber%20web.pdf