It used to take the technicians at SingHealth's radiology labs 30 minutes to make copies of X-ray films when doctors needed more than one copy to share.
Now, the process takes less than two minutes.
Because all the X-rays that are captured at the cluster's hospitals and clinics daily - more than 1,500 of them - are now digitised and shared through servers.
The servers store 1.7 terabytes of information in health records and 2.1 terabytes of radiology images, which, in their paper form, occupied at least a few rooms before.
Digital backbone
And they form the backbone of SingHealth's Electronic Medical Records (EMR) system that holds the clinical data of some 2.3 million patients who visit the health care cluster's three hospitals, five specialist centres and nine polyclinics. These include KK Women's and Children's Hospital, the National Heart Centre and SingHealth polyclinics.
There are laboratory test results, radiology images, medication history and patient discharge summaries - all of which the group's doctors and nurses can pull up online through any of the 6,220 workstations scattered across the different institutions.
'The system allows for convenient and secure sharing of medical information,' said Mr Fong Choon Khin, the group's chief technology officer.
In the past, a doctor from one hospital would have to ask for a patient's blood test results to be sent to him from another hospital, then wait a couple of days before he received it.
Or he might order a retest.
Now, he can extract the test results through the system immediately, added Mr Fong.
The benefit for patients: less waiting and savings from fewer tests.
Better consults
Since it was set up in 2002, the system has also evolved to include other functions.
An electronic prescription system was added so doctors could type in their prescriptions rather than scribble them for pharmacists to decipher later.
Online alerts were also added to notify doctors of abnormal test results.
In 2004, the entire system was linked up to the $500,000 EMR Exchange, or EMRX, which pools patient records between SingHealth and the National Healthcare Group, the other health care cluster here.
The advantage for doctors is better team consultation, said Associate Professor Agnes Tan, who heads the hand surgery department at the Singapore General Hospital.
'Through the EMR System, my junior doctors and I are able to discuss patients' cases and view X-ray images even when we are geographically apart,' said Prof Tan.
'This is also especially reassuring for some patients who want to know that a senior doctor has been consulted for his views.'