Restructuring the health system after merging and digitizing national data
According to Associate Professor, Dr. Nguyen Anh Dung - Deputy Director of the Ho Chi Minh City Department of Health, after completing the merger of administrative boundaries, the city's health sector identified the reorganization of the apparatus as a key and urgent task. Regional health centers in the merged areas such as the old Binh Duong and the old Ba Ria - Vung Tau continue to operate according to the hospital bed model, while centers in the old Ho Chi Minh City area have been converted to a hospital bedless model to streamline organization and specialize functions.
In addition, the health sector is submitting to the City People's Committee for approval to rename 24 hospitals and merge specialized units such as the Center for Disease Control (CDC), Forensic Center, Medical Assessment Center... to create unity and efficiency in management and operation.
Along with restructuring, the city is stepping up the construction of a public health database. Periodic health check-up campaigns for students, the elderly and workers are widely deployed, combined with specialized digital transformation software. This system will be connected to the national population database and the VNeID identification platform, contributing to building a unified electronic health record for each citizen.
Notably, all infectious disease monitoring and reporting activities have also been shifted to digital platforms. From June 2025, medical facilities across the city will simultaneously apply an integrated epidemic management system with an epidemic map, helping to monitor and promptly handle risk points in real time. This is an important shift in modernizing epidemic control capacity throughout the area.
Proactively prevent epidemics, improve grassroots health capacity and specialized techniques
In the first 6 months of 2025, Ho Chi Minh City achieved many positive results in disease control. The measles epidemic, with nearly 9,700 cases recorded, has been completely controlled, and is assessed by the Ministry of Health as a model. The new COVID-19-19 strain NB 1.8.1 appeared at the same time and was also closely monitored, with no deaths. Dengue fever and hand, foot and mouth disease progressed steadily, not exceeding the average of many years.
At the grassroots level, the medical examination and treatment system is increasingly strengthened. Currently, 80% of health stations have implemented health insurance examinations, an increase of 18% over the same period last year; the number of insurance examinations increased by nearly 40%, reflecting people's trust in frontline health care. Ho Chi Minh City is also implementing a school oral care model at 7 primary schools, while applying artificial intelligence (AI) in cervical cancer screening in some localities.
The health examination of students and the elderly provides important data. The city has imported health records for more than 1.2 million students and more than 526,000 elderly people. Thereby, it was discovered that the high rate of students with refractive errors (over 30%), obesity (17%) and the elderly with high blood pressure (over 60%), diabetes (25%).
At the same time, the city's end-of-line hospitals continue to make their mark with a series of specialized techniques successfully implemented, affirming the professional quality of Ho Chi Minh City's healthcare on the regional map.
In the coming time, the city will accelerate the completion of electronic medical records at all public hospitals before September 30, 2025, deploy electronic prescriptions across the health system, and build a Big Data platform to serve research, forecasting and operation of the smart, modern healthcare sector.
