Healthcare Transformation
By Asmahanim Amir

Pix Shahiddan Saidi

KUALA LUMPUR, 27 Nov 2015 – Molecular Medicine has transformed healthcare and greatly impacted management of patients.

Vice-Chancellor of the National University of Malaysia (UKM), Prof Datuk Dr Noor Azlan Ghazali said patient management needs molecular medicine with high-tech hardware to diagnose ailments and analyse the patient’s medical profile.

“For me, the greatest impact for such a discipline is in terms of the transformation in healthcare or in term of improving the management of patients.

“If this is the area where UMBI (UKM Medical Molecular Biology Institute) has the strengths, then it must be used to change the way we practise medicine locally, especially in our own Hospital Canselor Tuanku Muhriz in Cheras,” he said while delivering his speech at the 6th Regional Conference on Molecular Medicine (RCMM) in Conjunction with 2^nd National Conference for Cancer Research, here on 23 October.

He said he is glad UMBI is already providing molecular diagnostic and genetic analysis services to the hospital and others in diseases such as thalassaemia, epilepsy, and cancer.

Prof Noor Azlan said he also happy because UMBI also started a colorectal cancer screening programme using the detection of occult blood in the stools or faecal occult blood testing (FOBT).

“As an economist, I am aware of the high cost of health care and the budget allocation for this is not unlimited. Malaysia spends about four percent of the GDP on health care and we are fortunate that the healthcare is heavily subsidised in Malaysia.

“However, we should not take this for granted because I believe that we should do research which would lead to better treatment at lower cost or treatment which will prolong the survival of patients so that it will increase their productivity,” he said.

He also stated that preventive aspects must also be stepped up so that we can  reduce the prevalence of chronic diseases.

On the same note, Prof Noor Azlan said UMBI which is one of the Higher Institution Centres of Excellence (HICoE) recognised by the Ministry of Higher Education, is  already collaborating with the Institute for Microengineering and Nanotechnology (IMEN) and have had joint publications recently.

“Although the research focus for HICoE programme for UMBI is Cancer Biomarkers and the research focus for IMEN under the HICoE initiative is Artificial Kidney development, they will do research together,” he added.

The three day conference brings together 25 speakers locally and other countries such as Australia, Singapore, Japan, Hong Kong, United State and United Kingdom.