I refer to the report by senior health correspondent Salma Khalik (MOH must learn from breaches to build more robust, secure system; Feb 1) and the Forum letter by Ms Susan Tan (Rethink idea of centralised health record system; Feb 9).

Both suggest doctors should access patient records only when patients are present.

Both are written without an understanding of how healthcare professionals work.

Doctors don't just access patients' medical records when they are sitting before us.

Most of us prepare for clinic by going through our patient lists, clicking through each patient's record and carefully reviewing notes to catch up on events that may have happened since we last saw them, so that our clinic operations can flow smoothly.

In public-sector hospitals where clinic lists are packed, not doing so would decrease capacity and increase wait time.

Similarly, for patients in the ward, junior and senior doctors spend the time before rounds going through the list of patients under their care, reviewing blood test results and clinical charts.

Not doing so may risk doctors missing information, as rounds often require the need to cover more than 20 patients with complex medical conditions.

Most importantly, this allows doctors to use the patient-contact time to engage them, instead of looking at a computer screen.

Add to that the need for medical reports, consults from other doctors for a specialist opinion, audits of care and morbidity reviews to systematically improve care - all of these require access to patient data when the patient is not present with the common aim of delivering excellent medical care.

The other issue is of health literacy in Singapore.

Sadly, as many doctors in the public healthcare sector will attest to, this is currently less than optimal.

As doctors, we constantly advocate patient empowerment, and would be delighted to work with patients to deliver the best care.

I totally agree that we need to secure our systems to prevent data breaches in future but, to quote Ms Khalik herself, let us not throw the baby out with the bathwater.

In our eagerness to protect patient data, let's not forget to protect the patients themselves.

Manjari Lahiri (Dr)