KUCHING – The Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation recently awarded Swinburne University of Technology Sarawak Campus a grant of RM300,000 for research into the development of a software for the healthcare industry.
Called Novel Medical Knowledge Discovery System, the software will be developed by Swinburne Sarawak Campus in collaboration with the Sarawak Clinical Research Centre (CRC).
The CRC is the national clinical research arm of the Ministry of Health and is responsible for conducting clinical trials, clinical epidemiology and economic research, and for managing complex medical databases.
The research project started in April this year and will be completed in September 2010.
“The resulting software that will be developed is intended to help policy makers, departmental managers and finance officers in the healthcare industry to forecast and plan various resources including human capital, budget, drugs, equipment and clinical activities,” says Dr Patrick Then, a senior lecturer at the School of Computing and Design at Swinburne Sarawak Campus.
Dr Then, who heads the research project, said that there is a need to develop the software because the software currently being used by the healthcare industry is mostly for statistical analysis, clinical trials, daily operation and repository and it lacks the capability for higher-level analysis such as forecasting, budgeting, and quality control.
The University of California in Irvine and Purdue University in the United States will also provide technical expertise in the project via video conferencing and visits to the university.
Dr Then also said that the collaboration with the CRC and the two US universities is a milestone for Swinburne Sarawak Campus, adding that it will give undergraduate and postgraduate students involved an opportunity to experience working on an actual project.