Siemens Healthineers report examines barriers to timely stroke care in Malaysia

Siemens Healthineers at Hospital Management Asia 2026 in Bangkok, Thailand, released a report on stroke system readiness across ASEAN that assessed barriers to timely treatment in Malaysia. The publication focused on how delays before patients reach stroke centres affect treatment timing.

The report attributed delays in Malaysia to low public awareness of stroke symptoms and transportation barriers, which contributed to patients arriving after the critical window. It also cited inter-hospital transfer delays and specialist access concentrated in major urban centres. The report further pointed to workforce shortages, stating Malaysia had one neurologist for every 323,000 people, most based in cities.

According to the report, Malaysia has made progress in stroke care over the past decade by establishing dedicated stroke units, national stroke pathways, and expanding access to clot-dissolving treatment via injection (intravenous thrombolysis) and, gradually, thrombectomy. The report described hospitals building multidisciplinary teams and developing advanced neuroimaging capabilities to coordinate across the stroke pathway, while noting some hospitals routed stroke patients through the emergency department rather than directly for a computed tomography (CT) and that imaging protocols were inconsistent.

Universiti Malaya Medical Centre was described as providing round-the-clock access to mechanical thrombectomy and complex neurovascular interventions, supported by state-of-the-art biplane angiography technology, along with education, research, and regional capacity building to train specialists and share practice. Experts discussed hub-and-spoke referral models to help regional hospitals rapidly identify patients needing thrombectomy and transfer them efficiently to a capable centre. “Stroke care depends on a chain of decisions and actions that begins before a patient reaches hospital. No single institution or technology can strengthen that chain alone,” said Siow. “From recognising the signs at home to reaching the right centre for treatment, closing the gaps in that chain is what will determine how many more lives can be saved in Malaysia.” The report also described priorities including training EMS to identify stroke and activate hospital pathways before arrival, enabling eligible patients to bypass the emergency department and go directly to CT, defining clear imaging protocols across institutions, developing hub-and-spoke referral models for faster specialist transfer, and auditing treatment times for quality improvement.

Press release, provided by Cision on behalf of Siemens Healthineers. Read the original.