iSOFT scoops top Financial Times Deutschland award
A telemedicine network project currently being implemented in the Leipzig region has won Australian IT firm iSOFT the top award in the 5th Ideenpark Gesundheitswirtschaft (Idea-park Healthcare) competition, presented by the Financial Times Deutschland at its annual FTD-Health Conference in Berlin. The awards are given for projects that contribute to greater transparency, productivity and efficiency in the German healthcare system.
The competition judges included Heinz Lohmann (Consultant in the healthcare sector), Sophia Schlette (Kaiser Permanente), Matthias Schrappe (Advisory Council), Ulrich Wandschneider (Mediclin), Jürgen Wasem (University of Duisburg-Essen) and Nicholas Forster (G + J Business Media), and they analysed and evaluated around 50 nominated projects.
The winning Telematikverbund Sachsen Nord (TVSN) project aims to integrate the separate IT structures in eight different clinics to create one effective medical network that will significantly optimise breast cancer treatment in the region. To this end, the partnering organisations are integrating iSOFT’s electronic case record solution, a development based on the Fraunhofer Institute for Software and System Technology specification. Medical information should then be distributed seamlessly within the entire network.
First, however, a variety of challenges had to be solved. The IT environments of all the collaborators had to be elevated to a common standard, for example. In addition, the technology necessary to implement a consistent communications and coordination network had to be integrated into the different systems.
Inevitably data protection was another issue. The case record data is stored only for the duration of the specific case; it is automatically deleted when that treatment ends. Additional data security is ensured by the fact that patients must specifically agree to their data storage and use by specific doctors in the etwork.
‘The substantial network infrastructure, which is based on secure internet technologies, shows that the concept goes one step further than most comparable projects,’ the competition judges said, adding: ‘It also avoids the sensitive data protection topic in a very elegant and efficient way.’
The project will enter a two-year trial period this spring. Results obtained in the clinical tests will then become the basis for fine tuning the system. The findings will also be published and made available to the entire market, in this way helping the German healthcare system towards greater efficiency.
Further details: www.isofthealth.com
21.05.2010
