Sarah Jevrem, Magnus Nordlund and Petter Trillkott. Photo: Private
A fundamental weakness in the current systems is that data is stored in a proprietary format.
Poorly functioning IT systems are since many years a source of despair by health professionals at all levels. Ease and efficiency are conspicuous by their absence. Many counties have stitched together a patchwork of systems that require multiple separate logins and multiple searches to find adequate information and perform administrative measures for the same patient. When we showcase our IT systems in stark use of officers with no previous experience of the user side of the systems we are met by a combination of disbelief and discouragement.
The health professionals are forced to spend more and more time the keyboard means that you get less space for the purpose of medical care – to take care of our patients. Ten years ago, you could as doctor on call in the emergency room to spend most of their time with patients, and only a small part of the administration. Nowadays, it’s the other way around.
After many years has now been at management realized how bad it was addressed and decided to build new systems from scratch. For instance, Region Skåne, Stockholm County Council and Region Västra Götaland initiated a collaboration to jointly prepare the acquisition of a new process core and common system.
The problem is that thus only provide more modern system, with basically the same restrictions the old ones.
A fundamental weakness of the current systems is that data is stored in a proprietary format. This means that it is locked to a certain system and a particular supplier. Data can only with great inconvenience and high costs migrated to a competing system. In this way there is virtually no effective competition once you started using his system.
Another limitation is that the caregiver in the current state stores its own data on your own servers.
When it during a consultation, it appears that the patient previously been treated or diagnosed with a condition of relevance in the current situation it is impossible to obtain real-time examination findings or journal data from another health care provider. This means that the consultation will not be as effective for the patient could be the case.
The solution to these problems would be to create a national database with data in ickeproprietärt standard formats.
Each citizen would which have their own catalog of medical record data, x-ray laboratory values and so on. It would mean that the information is available wherever it benefits the patient.
If you become acutely ill outside the residence, data can be relevant for the treatment of the current state, the old ECG, X-rays and so on quickly obtained. The health center could get a better handle on what actually occurred when the patient was hospitalized. Hospital doctor who is considering offering an elective surgery would be able to quickly see how the patient’s lung function actually been at the controls at the health center.
Through that all relevant information is available, where the patient is raising the quality and safety of care.
Questions regarding medical record confidentiality is naturally present in such a context. In the current situation where healthcare providers access to their own medical records and who is active in the current treatment have the right to read it. These fundamentals could persist, but the patient could provide a new caregiver temporary access to certain information in order to improve the care.
Another obvious profits is that the health authority has full control over their own data and can freely choose the software to manage it. Different suppliers would then have to compete to deliver efficient and affordable software to present and write the current data. If users are not satisfied with the way the medical record information system work, a competing system run in parallel and you can then choose the best. This would of course put pressure on the industry to improve its products.
In this way we would get a future-proof system that ensures that all relevant information about a patient becomes available when needed. We would ensure flexibility in the systems and functioning competition in the industry.
To allow county councils continued to operate their own solutions according to the same principles as before would mean another lost decade. Time for the Ministry of Social Affairs to step into the path?
Sarah Jevrem
The specialist anesthesia clinic, Chairman North Bay läkarförening
Magnus Nordlund
Physician orthopedics, clinic representative North Bay läkarförening
Petter Trillkott
ST-doctors surgery, the former IT consultant with a focus on information and network security
All the NU Hospital, Uddevalla Hospital-North Älvsborg County Hospital
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