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Slovenia
is in the process of introducing a national IT infrastructure to enable medical
professionals to share patients’ health information on a nationwide basis and
ensure that patients can access their health insurance data online.The country rolled out a health insurance system based on Gemalto smart cards in 2000, in a move that helped to free up clinicians’ time in order to spend more time with patients. However, the initiative was not sufficiently coordinated at the national level initially. This meant that, while healthcare insurance companies were able to exchange medical data electronically, the same was not true of healthcare providers, where activities were often paperbased and processes were not standardised. A lack of central IT funding was also leading to a growing gap between requirements and practice on the ground.
As a result, all participants in the local healthcare market, including the Health Ministry, the Health Insurance Institute and the National Council for Healthcare Informatics, came together in 2006 in order to create the eHealth 2010 project.
The aim of the scheme is to enable 30,000 healthcare professionals and pharmacists to exchange information electronically and securely in real time using e-signature based documents, in order to ensure joined-up patient healthcare.
Marjan Suselj, director of the HIC System Sector at the Health Insurance Institute of Slovenia, explains one of the benefits of the new system. “Pharmacists, for example, will be able to issue drugs electronically and link the data with patient records. This means they can see what other drugs have been prescribed and check how they interact, to prevent complications.”
Healthcare professionals will also be able to use the same network to share health insurance data with insurance companies. The increased transparency this will bring is expected to reduce misuse and fraud.
All parties will be able to securely authenticate themselves to the system using Gemalto’s digital certificate based smart cards, both for identification purposes and in order to provide an audit trail.
Suselj says: “Security is a key issue for the entire system because this is sensitive patient data, so the entire project has been developed with this in mind.”
In the past, patient data was held on each citizen’s health insurance card, which was updated to include any changes in the available data. In future, however, individuals will be provided with new digital certificate based smart cards – again from Gemalto - for identification purposes. The cards will enable them to securely access their insurance data, which will be held in back-end databases but accessed via an eHealth portal.
Over time, other goals include enabling citizens to book an appointment online to see a specialist, which should improve waiting list times.
A field trial of the new online system was due to take place in October among 100,000 people in the western region of Slovenia. Roll-out will start in March 2009 and is scheduled to be completed by the end of that year.
Feb 19, 2008 | Gemalto Delivers New Generation e-Health Insurance Cards Solution to Slovenia
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