Malaysian Health Check Agency Cuts Queue Time
by Cordelia Lee

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia--Fomema, a Malaysian foreign worker health check agency, plans to cut queue time by as much as half with its new online service.

In October, the online registration of foreign workers in Malaysia and nationwide processing of medical examination results will be faster with Fomema's newly integrated online system (NIOS).

"Upon completion, NIOS will allow employers to download registration forms and check the status of the medical examinations online or via short message service (SMS)," said See Ah Sing, Fomema's chief operating officer. Fomema is the concession company appointed by the Malaysian Government to carry out the monitoring and supervision of medical examinations of foreign workers in Malaysia. The company currently registers an average of 50,000 to 80,000 workers per month.

Presently, employers can pre-register workers and select their choice of clinic online, but have to submit registration forms and supporting documents such as passport, as well as pay in person at the nearest Fomema office. With the new service in place, he expects employers with a single worker to spend no more than 5 minutes at any of its branch counters. Coupled with a faster computerized registration system, he said, this will translate to a 50 percent reduction in waiting time.

The RM3 million (US$790,000) project includes software development, hardware and network infrastructure setup. It also includes a disaster recovery centre, to be located at Serdang, and a primary data centre to be located at Cyberjaya. The system is jointly developed by Fomema, dbix Systems and Hewlett-Packard.

Other benefits
With the new system, medical practitioners would also be able to send results of medical examinations more securely, which lets Fomema transmit results immediately to the Immigration Department. The shorter processing time lets employers renew their foreign workers' permits faster. There are currently 3,370 doctors, 307 labs and 772 X-ray clinics registered with the company. Next up, Fomema has already penned down plans to upgrade the payment methods and increase the number of payment modes.

CNETAsia
13 September 2004