JOHOR BAHRU, June 21 — Nearly five million patients have received treatment at the National Heart Institute (IJN) since its establishment in 1992.
IJN chief executive officer Datuk Dr Aizai Azan Abdul Rahim said despite that, IJN does not face any problems with regard to accommodating the volume of patients as it has sufficient staff and adequate equipment and facilities.
“From the aspect of facilities, the IJN has nine operation theatres, especially for heart patients, and on one day we can perform 18 operations.
“We also have an average of about 2,400 staff, but our largest workforce and backbone are nurses. As for the doctors in all departments, there are 170 of them. So that is why we are able to operate,” he told reporters earlier today.
Earlier, Dr Aizai Azan attended a memorandum of understanding (MoU) and memorandum of agreement (MoA) ceremony between Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) and IJN, here today. UTM deputy vice-chancellor (Research and Innovation) Prof Rosli Md Illias also attended the event.
At the event today, he said via the MoU and MoA with UTM, his team through the IJN Foundation will have the opportunity to carry out research and innovation collaborations with UTM medical and research experts at a higher level.
Meanwhile, Rosli said the collaboration between UTM and IJN was established from 2013 until 2022, and it will continue for another five years through the signing of the MoU today.
He said during the collaboration, both parties carried out various programmes and research as well as established the IJN-UTM Cardiovascular Engineering Centre in 2013.
“Among the research carried out in the cardiovascular field are the development of cardiac devices, membrane and vascular or heart grafts, rehab telemetry systems, health data management systems and telerobotic systems,” Rosli said.
At the same time, UTM is also ready to continue working with IJN in the future, especially in the field of artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics.
— Bernama
