Aigars JaundāldersDPA

Riga, April 20th, 2007

Information managementHealthcare perspective

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Agenda

• About DPA

• Information management – challenges and responses

• Thinking about e-Health...

About DPA

• DPA is Latvian IT company specializing in software licensing and solutions based on Microsoft technologies. Company currently has offices in Riga, Vilnius and Kiev;

• Services and solutions offered: – IT infrastructure planning and implementation, – Collaboration and messaging solutions, – ERP solutions, – Security solutions and services, – Custom development.

• Established in 1997. FY2006 turnover – ca. 12 million Euros;• Our customers – large and midsized companies and organizations in Latvia,

Lithuania and Ukraine;• DPA is Microsoft Gold Certified Partner (highest level of partnership with Microsoft)

company with Advanced Infrastructure and Licensing competencies;• Representing more than 20 software vendors in target markets.

Information managementChallenges and responses

• The Joint Commission - an independent, not-for-profit organization, predominant standards-setting and accrediting body in health care in the United States:

– Clinical/service and non-clinical information management as one of the top standards for accredited organizations. 49% of organizations fail on this criteria!

• Response:– Readily available technologies to deploy intra and extra organizational

information management solution. Basic technology is available in Windows Server 2003 at no additional cost. Initial deployment can be done within days, not months!;

– Infrastructure to support IM. Remember – for your house to last, you should start building process only after the planning is done, from the foundation and upwards and not the other way around. In other words, without reliable IT infrastructure, any IM solution will fail for security and manageability reasons.

Information managementChallenges and responses

• Errors in patient identification prevent appropriate use of information collected. Amounts to ~4% of total errors reported on MEDMARX.

• How do you confirm identity of the person about to be given treatment? If it is unconcious and no IDs?

• Response:– Biometrics (iris and fingerprint) technologies can help both to identify reliably

patients irregardless of their state of conciousness and authenticate doctors for access to healthcare systems

– Overall tendency is to try to restrict use of biometrics processing systems to law enforcement agencies. Healthcare professionals (also in Latvia!) should actively lobby to allow usage of such a nationwide system for patient identification purposes. Would it make sense if a person would have right to be identified only after he/she has become unidentified corpse?

– DPA offers biometrics based identification and authentication systems and required consultancy services.

WHAT IS E-HEALTH?

In a broader sense, the term characterizes not only a technical development, but also a state-of-mind, a way of thinking, an attitude, and a commitment for networked, global thinking, to improve health care locally, regionally, and worldwide by using information and communication technology.

Gunther Eysenbach (J Med Internet Res 2001;3(2):e20)Don’t confine this idea only to getting new conventional IT systems.

Do remember that e-Health is about improving overall services and infrastructure by means of ICT. This means that it can be a way to enhance your base infrastructure, be it patient bedside monitors or other equipment that nowadays can all be integrated into central information systems!

Summary

• Information managment in Healthcare is critical component to fulfill on organization’s vision and mission. To provide better service to participating entities;

• Up until now it was largely overlooked due to complexity and costs for such implementations;

• Today IM solutions are much more lighteweight, based on widely used technologies. Basic framework can be deployed within days!

• For IM to succeed, rigid core IT infrastructure must be in place;• Unless patients and internal users are correctly identified, no IM or

patient management system will ever succeed. Biometrics can provide solution;

• Think about e-Health in broader sense, use it to improve your core infrastructure and work with partners sharing the same idea.

Thank you!

DPAElizabetes str. 75, Riga, LV-1050, LatviaPhone: +371 67 509 900Fax: +371 67 509 906