The aim is to improve access to telemedicine services for hospitals in the Alpine region.
In Garmisch-Partenkirchen last January, project leaders came together to present and discuss the status of the project from which patients all over the Alpine area should benefit in the future.
A disparate population and difficult terrain – these are the reasons why telemedicine should be fostered as a likely means to improve access to care.
In ALIAS, care organisations from Austria, France, Germany, Italy and Slovenia, as well as Switzerland – a non-EU member country – are collaborating.
Project milestones include defining concrete application scenarios, establishing a technological platform, designing and implementing telemedicine services and motivating physicians to adopt the offering.
In January 2011, the test platform had gone online with rules for authentication as well as a firewall.
In May and June that year, the physicians’ workflow in the second opinion tool was tested, and patient cases were set up for trials.
End user training took place in September and October.
“The platform went into its pilot phase in November”, remembered Dr. Natalia Allegretti, ALIAS Project Manager, Lombardia Informatica SpA – Regione Lombardia, “with a lot of technical activity to ensure that all hospitals in the network were properly connected to the platform”.
Final testing for the pilot phase took place in December and in January 2012; this included the videoconferencing tool and the second opinion tool, the physician workflow integrating these tools and SMS service, and exchange of patient information.
The platform is built upon Microsoft technology. The aim was to ensure secure information exchanges between the sites and the central platform.
Connectors used by sites were developed centrally to safeguard security.
“All exchanges are built on international standards such as HL7, IHE profiles, etc.”, said Thierry Durand, SISRA administrator, Système d’Information de Santé Rhône-Alpes.
Patient data is highly sensitive; a lot has been done in the project to safeguard privacy and security.
A secure communication platform was programmed, and a “Circle-of-Trust” Agreement was signed by the participating hospitals ensuring compliance.
The security of the system will be approved by an external auditor.
According to Dr. Allegretti, “now, all participating hospitals are ready to roll out the services”.
The hospitals are connected either synchronously or asynchronously.
A number of connections have been already carried out via ALIAS, both for consultations and access to patients records.
Content such as medication, diagnoses and therapies – was translated into all languages of participants.
Even if a few organisational issues and some technical issues still need to be fixed, the central platform and related services are functioning well, summarised Dr. Allegretti.
“The lesson we have learned”, underlined Dr. Thomas Schmeidl, Head of IT and QA, Garmisch-Partenkirchen Hospital, “is that sometimes, things take longer than expected, and minor problems may temporarily cause major difficulties.”
Garmisch, the first hospital to be connected to the network, helped solve numerous technical issues and optimise usability.
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Quelle/Source: Hospital IT Europe, 26.03.2012
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