Telkom Indonesia revolutionises health information exchange for better services

The telco giant’s first step was its One Data System for COVID-19 vaccination.

Indonesia’s ambitious plan to achieve herd immunity by the end of 2021 initially appeared unattainable, as it required administering one million injections daily. However, Telkom Indonesia’s Satu Data Vaksinasi COVID-19 (SDVC) played a crucial role in realising this objective. SDVC, also known as the One Data System for COVID-19 vaccination, facilitated the integration, validation, and filtering of vaccination data from various institutions involved in the rollout.

Telkom Indonesia’s Head of Health Ecosystem for Digital Business and Technology, Joddy Hernady, revealed that the company plans to improve the platform to become the central database of Indonesians’ healthcare information.

“We want it to be used as a place where all the health stakeholders in Indonesia can exchange health information,” Hernady told Asian Telecom in an exclusive interview.

As of writing, the data being recorded by SDVC are just COVID-19 vaccination information. As per Telkom, the platform has over 600 million COVID-19 vaccination data.

In the future, Hernady said Telkom Indonesia hopes to add other health-related data such as an individual’s general vaccination record and insurance.

“In the future, the Ministry of Health can leverage SDVC to become a national health information exchange and health information services so that we can provide better health services in Indonesia,” Hernady said.

A superapp for healthcare

Apart from SDVC, Telkom Indonesia also plans to upgrade its contact tracing app, PeduliLindungi, which also played an important role in Indonesia’s COVID fight. PeduliLindungi is an application commonly used by Indonesians during the COVID-19 pandemic to access certificates and information about vaccines, as well as to check in at public places.

According to Hernady, the company wants to turn PeduliLindungi into a super app which can offer preventative and curative healthcare solutions to its users.

Amongst preventive solutions that Telkom Indonesia will add to its app are related to wellness programmes.

“We can integrate the feature with a wellness app called Fita which was developed by Telkomsel, or other similar apps,” Hernady said.

Fita is a health application that focuses on changing people’s behavior by implementing good habits that promote the #SehatMakinNikmat Movement and present local content about health, nutrition and various sports programmes that have been curated by a Certified Coach.

At the moment, the app has proactive solutions with more than 10 telemedicine providers on board. Hernady said the company will also add other proactive solutions such as e-prescription, and medicine delivery to PeduliLindungi.

“PeduliLindungi can also be connected with health insurance providers and third-party administrators to offer more benefits to insurance members who are also now PeduliLindungi users,” Hernady added.

For better centralisation of data, Telkom Indonesia will integrate PeduliLindungi with SDVC and the Indonesia Health Services (IHS) Platform owned by the Ministry of Health of the Republic of Indonesia for the app to have information on its users’ personal health records and other related health data, “PeduliLindungi, in the end, will provide an end-toend patient journey,” said Hernady. “We will transform

PeduliLindungi into a super app that provides promotive, preventive, corrective, and rehabilitative solutions. We will do this by collaborating with players in those areas, and leveraging their offers,” he added.

PeduliLindungi has more than 93 million registered users and around 52 million monthly active users. The PeduliLindungi app and SDVC were recognised in the inaugural Asian Telecom Awards as Indonesia’s Mobile App of the Year and Digital Initiative of the Year. The Asian Telecom Awards started in 2003. The awards programme will recognise the remarkable achievements and initiatives of Asia’s leading telecom companies.

“Winning these two categories from the Asian Telecom Awards is an important achievement for us. This shows that we are on the right track and we need to continue with what we have done so far in digital transformation,” Hernady said.

“These two awards will also emphasise Telkom’s position as the leading digital telco in Indonesia, and also one of the leading digital telcos in the Asia Pacific,” he added.