3.3. Digital Hospital Transformation in Turkey
With parallel to digitalization trend in the world, the Turkish Ministry
of Health included the vision of transformation of public hospitals into
digital hospitals in their strategic plan for 2013-2017. The digital
hospital is defined by the Ministry of Health (2017) as “Hospital
information management system, digital medical records, PACS, digital
medical archive, barcode, RFID technologies, drug and material tracking,
mobile and tablet computers, medical technologies, smart buildings,
energy, lighting technologies and information technologies. systems,
communication systems, data, sound, video and multimedia technologies,
tele-medicine, tele-education, virtual autopsy, virtual surgery,
virtualization, management services, consultancy and all kinds of
integrated services, basically it is a fully integrated hospital.” To
ensure that this is managed from a single center, the General
Directorate of Health Information Systems (SBSGM) of the Ministry of
Health was established.