Digitizing health exam procedures to implement low-carbon ESG principles

Health exam services at Tungs’ Taichung MetroHarbor Hospital include company labor exams, exams for laborers performing special operations, school health exams, and community integrated screening services.

Tungs’ Taichung MetroHarbor Hospital brings environmental protection, social responsibility, and corporate responsibility into the core of our operations. In putting ESG principles into practice, we demonstrate our commitment to environmental protection. We use E Ink colored e-paper smart cards, a digitized questionnaire system, a smart health exam system, and other innovative technologies to lessen our impact on the environment.

From 2021 to 2024, our hospital assessed and optimized a variety of systems. First, in our questionnaire system, we introduced a management dashboard and multilingual versions, to resolve problems that foreigners encounter when using paper forms. The real-time dashboard allows questionnaire status monitoring and error detection. We also worked with an outside vendor to introduce digital e-paper consent forms and other such technologies. This not only enhances service efficiency and medical care quality, but reduces paper usage and lowers carbon emissions, thus helping make a low-carbon environment a reality.

In all these ways, Tungs’ Taichung MetroHarbor Hospital is enhancing overall medical care quality, and demonstrating the guiding role that medical care institutions can play in sustainable development and social responsibility.

• Real-Time Workstation Integration
  Missed abnormality detection rate reduced from 5% to below 1%

• Specimen Accuracy Assurance
  Specimen error rate reduced from 4% to 0%; shift handover and inventory time shortened by 30%

• Physician One-Stop Integration with Smart Assistance
  Documentation speed improved by 40%; consultation time shortened by 10 minutes; abnormality tracking efficiency improved by 30%; early abnormality detection rate improved by 15%; reporting time shortened by 25%

• Real-Time Examination Station Monitoring
  Cross-unit communication needs reduced by 50%; on-site bottleneck resolution time shortened by 35%

• Tung's e-Health APP Online Report Access
  Examinees can instantly access health examination reports anytime anywhere

• Back-End Smart Management Center
  Integrates station management AI data tracking and complete history lookup forming a closed-loop smart health examination architecture

• Fully Digitized Health Exam Services
  Digital processes fully adopted since 2021 covering check-in through back-end management; average exam times shortened by 4 minutes comparing first half 2024 with 2023

• AI-Assisted Chest Radiography
  Implementation rate increased from 99.5% to 100% from 2023 onward; 1094 pulmonary nodule cases and 17 pneumothorax cases detected

In 2023, we had 3 publications, with 1 international conference presentation, 1 poster, and 1 domestic conference presentation.

I. Improvement of the Efficiency and Quality of the Itinerant Health Examination System with Digitization and Artificial Intelligence. 39th International Society for Quality in Healthcare (ISQua) Conference, 2023. Oral report. (See Fig. 8–9.)

II. AI Thoracic Disease Detection with Zero Delay: Real-time Disease Detection that Leaves No Gaps. Taiwan Joint International Conference in Healthcare, 2023 poster. (See Fig. 10.)

III. Improvements to House Call and On-site Thoracic Radiography Exam Processes and Efficiency in Reporting Thoracic Disease Abnormalities: An Example of Using an AI Thoracic Disease Assisted Detection System Integrating 5G Image Transmission. Taiwan Association of Medical Radiation Technologists 23rd Academic Forum, 2023. Oral report. (See Fig. 11.)

Since being introduced into our health exam system in 2022, the systematic procedures have enhanced the smoothness of the overall exam process. The process has also helped physicians and other employees to focus better on serving examinees. From 2022 to 2024, health exam service companies’ customer satisfaction rates have stayed at 4.7 or higher.

Since 2022, the implementation of our digitized health exam system has not only made the health exam process go more smoothly, but has also increased the efficiency of physicians and other employees. Employee satisfaction has risen from the original 4.6 points to 4.8, a clear improvement over where it was with the non-digitized health exam system.

• 2022 — Poster presentation at the International Symposium on Occupational Health, Occupational Medicine and Nursing on AI-assisted interpretation accuracy for special health examinations in noisy workplaces

• 2021 — Journal publication in Tung's Medical Journal on neural network-based pneumothorax detection in chest X-rays, establishing a clinical foundation for AI-assisted radiographic interpretation

• 2016 — Oral presentation at the Joint Academic Conference on Health Care on the development of an AI-based automated health examination system

After providing an exam and taking chest X-rays, the thoracic AI-assisted interpretation gives a timely interpretation of probabilities for pulmonary nodules and pneumothorax.