Challenge
To point out a typical problem, from millions of prescriptions issued worldwide only a fraction is delivered and processed electronically today and probably a maximum of 1,000 of them have an automatic mechanism for checking intolerances or drug contraindications for the affected patient.
The IT integration and the understanding of “logistic chains” in the healthcare has so far passed the healthcare sector at the expense of the patient for very different reasons. The solution of half electronic and half paper based documentation makes administrative processes unnecessarily complex and expensive as some examples listed below point out the symptoms:
- the patient goes to the doctor, laboratory, back to hospital, just to pickup and deliver documents, not even for examination or treatment. This keeps the patient moving instead of the documents;
- even if the patient and doctor agreed upon electronic data exchange and communicatoin this usually goes to the expense of privacy of the patient very often weakly protected or unencrypted;
- About one fifth of all laboratory and X-ray examinations are unnecessarily taken simply because they are not available, although the analogous examination have been recently carried out – double examinations are a risk for health and increasing costs;
- No standardized processes across doctors and within healthcare organizations result in low quality of healthcare and treatment;
- Time consuming care as a result of too many unnecessary hospitalizations as a reason of not having the medical history of the patient available, especially for chronic patient diseases, where doctors spend too much time in healthcare institutions and patients getting there.
Aim
The insurance company AOK Nordost is providing digital access to healthcare services to 1,75 million insurees with all actors to the healthcare network GeN (Gesundheitsnetzwerk) in the northern region of Germany and thereby to enable a country wide rollout in the next step. The insured persons will be enabled to manage all their healthcare data by their own through a stepwise integration of different use cases. A transformation from a passive patient to patient-centered service takes place, where patients needs and preferences will be met. This progress in healthcare will simplify the outdated workflows and allow the patient to access, control and distribute his own medical data. The GeN portal solution will solve the healthcare problems we face today.
A crucial factor of success is the participation of general practitioners and the data exchange of the medical information systems with other healthcare providers and patients within the healthcare network.
A secure exchange of data over the GeN portal is already possible for more than 50 general practitioners, medical specialists, 2 AMEOS, Sana and Vivantes clinics, which is a big achievement, e.g. double examinations can be avoided, during surgery’s as they are time consuming, so medical expenses can be reduced.
A higher quality in healthcare will be achieved through:
- an easy and secure exchange of data;
- easy access to data;
- as well as an easy time booking management.
The patient decides who gets access to his medical data which empowers patients to obtain a better insight over their healthcare status and stronger participate in decision taking on treatment options.
Solution
The patient portal has the purpose to put the patient in the main focus (patient empowerment) to manage his medical data in a way that the patient decides:
1. which healthcare provider has access to;
2. what kind of selected patient data for;
3. what time period.
Depending on the patient or user settings, patients are able to view, download, send their medical data also to unregistered users as well as to share their medical data with other registered users. This includes the general use cases patient, document management and the exchange of documents with the following features:
- On- and offboarding of patients
- Consent management
- Booking appointments
- Documents upload on the portal
- Sharing documents with other users
- Displaying documents on the information systems of the general practitioners and in hospitals
- Admission- and release management
- Medication plan
- Immunisation record
In the next development stage following functionalities will be available:
- Integration of laboratory providers
- Service provider register
- Identification of insured persons per Video Ident
Because of the modularity of the platform the amount of use cases can be extended anytime according to the needs of the service providers. This flexibility provides benefits for patients and doctors. With the patients agreement the doctor has access to the medical history and is able to make more accurate diagnosis and thus improves the quality of treatment. Doctors and service providers experience improved business processes, communication between other service providers and the availability of medical data.
Standards
To ensure the interoperability, data exchange as well as sharing of data within the AOK GeN platform the system complies with these international healthcare standards:
- DICOM
- CDA
- HL7 v2 and v3
- FHIR
- IHE Profiles
- XDS
- XML
This project is no longer active.