The right information for the right patient at the moment when it is needed.
Benefits for Healthcare Providers
The Situation. Healthcare providers, be it institutions like hospitals organisations or individual doctors and nurses, are working with an increasing number of information systems, all containing relevant data on the patients. Typically, these systems behave like “islands”, not sharing patient-related data between systems. This leads to broken work processes, the need for repetitive data entry (with risk of mistakes) and an incomplete view on the patient’s record. The same is true when caring for patients coming from abroad.
Benefits of Common Health Data. An integrated information system, with proper flow of information from one system to the other, puts the right information in front of the right doctor at the right moment to assure the right treatment. It’s that simple – and applies to local and foreign patients.
Benefits For Citizens
The Situation. Europeans are highly mobile people, traveling freely, whether for work or vacation, between countries. In the course of one single day, a European citizen might pass through several nations. And each European citizen carries health insurance provided by his or her country of residence. In the case of an accident or a health crisis, a citizen may be treated in a foreign country by nurses and doctors speaking a different language. How can the foreign doctor determine the medications being taken by this patient, or any allergies to medications? What is the medical history of this patient? And, of course, who is paying for the often-expensive emergency medical intervention?
Benefits of Common Health Data. A system for identification of patients shared across Europe enables a medical team to quickly locate records for a patient. Creating common data for emergency medical information and medications using IHE standards puts the right information in front of the right doctor at the right moment to assure the right treatment.