The Hospital Authority (HA) said a series of measures it has undertaken to streamline workflow and its procurement system could translate into savings of HK$1 billion, while patients would benefit through cheaper and a wider choice of medications.

In a press briefing, the authority’s chief pharmacist William Chui said a cost assessment panel set up to negotiate with pharmaceutical firms has paid dividends.

“We would negotiate the price based on scientific research and advice by medical economists,” he said, adding they would take reference from prices on the mainland.

As a result, Chui revealed that seven out of 10 suppliers have agreed to lower drug prices, with an average reduction of 20 percent.

HA Chief Executive Tony Ko, meanwhile, gave updates on the use of artificial intelligence tools to enhance efficiency and ease the workload of frontline staff.

He pointed to a Smart Antibiotic Stewardship Programme which can automatically identify potentially inappropriate use of antibiotics through protocol-driven algorithm.

Officially rolled out in January 2024, Ko said the tool saved time and effort as medics no longer had to comb through different databases to obtain patients’ records.

“In the past, before we have this AI initiative, we need the expert colleagues, for example, our infectious disease expert or microbiology expert, to look into the various laboratory results to check the patient's conditions…before you decide whether you need to change antibiotics,” Ko said.

“We developed our own clinical management system for almost 30 years, and all the data are within our systems. Instead of asking people to do it manually, to check whether a certain patient still needed a certain broad-spectrum antibiotic, now it's all in the system and automated.”

The HA has also been using automated tools to tackle the large number of medical and discharge reports, with around 100,000 such requests received annually.

Ko said 80 percent of these reports can be generated by AI, reducing the time staff typically spent on this task by 40 percent, and their workload by one-third.

Every report will be manually verified to ensure accuracy, he added, while complex cases still have to be handled entirely by physicians.