Home > Cases > Rede Telemática da Saúde de Aveiro

Rede Telemática da Saúde de Aveiro

Acronym of the case:

RTS

Web address of the case:

http://www.rtsaude.pt

Country of the case:

Portugal

City/region:

Aveiro

regional eHealth | shared electronic health records | continuity of care


Posting Date: 25 November 2009
Last Edited Date: 26 November 2009

367 Visits

Author:

Ilídio Oliveira (University of Aveiro)Portugal
Type of initiative
  • Network
Case Abstract

The RTS network is a regional health information network connecting primary and secondary care providers in the region of Aveiro. It allows for health professionals to share clinical information, by integrating existing systems and making their content  accessible in a user- friendly portal. The key application is a shared electronic health record. These cross-institutional views are achieved without creating any disruption to the existing systems, thus no changes are required. ; Instead, a proactive system (HIETA engine) works on indexing the existing information and retrieving them upon demand to feed the RTS professionals' portal.

RTSaude provides access to more than 11 000 000 care episodes, relating to over 35 000 citizens, to a target community of almost 1 000 physicians. The network has been awarded the necessary clearance from the Portuguese data protection agency.

Description of the case
Domain
eHealth
Topic
Electronic health records | Hospital information systems | Regional/national Health Information Networks
Sector
Healthcare
Start date - End date
June 2003 (Ongoing)
Date operational
January 2007
Target Users
Add Patients | Health professionals
Target Users Description

RTS has two profiles: health professionals and patients.

Health professionals working on the partner institutions can share clinical information on-line, under the access policies and security provisions defined.

Patients (the citizen) use RTS to manage their relationship with the care providing organizations.

Scope
National | Regional (sub-national)
Status
Pilot
Language(s)
Portuguese
Policy Context and Legal Framework

Project Size and Implementation
Type of initiative
Other
Overall Implementation approach
Partnerships between administration and/or private sector and/or non-profit sector
Technology choice
Mainly (or only) open standards | Open source software
Funding source
Public funding national
Project size
Implementation: €500-999,000
Implementation and Management Approach

In the context of the regional initiative towards "digital cities" (AveiroDigital), the University of Aveiro and the major hospital in the region of Aveiro designed the project. The University was expected to deliver scientific and technical leadership; the clinical partner, the domain requirements and validation.

Technology solution

The solution is heavily supported in service-oriented architectures, using web-services to encapsulate heterogeneous information sources. The development has been conducted in FLOSS solutions (Java, Apache suite, PostgreSQL).

Impact, innovation and results
Impact

The RTS allows the health professionals to access more information about patients than before. Working as an aggregator of clinical data in the region, the RTS can support better informed decisions and eventually avoid redundant procedures.

This is especially true in the communication from secondary care back to the primary care, which used to be sparse. With the RTS, general practitioners can get in near real time details on the episodes taking place at the Hospitals and practically access discharge letters on their patients.

Track record of sharing

The results attained in RTS were disseminated in scientific meetings and public sector initiatives.

The software platform supporting the RTS (the HIETA engine) can be reused and extended to set up different regional information networks or build integrated access over existing distributed health information systems.

Lessons learnt

The changeability of leaderships (common in the Portuguese Hospitals) greatly hinders the development and sustainability of large telematic initiatives.

Health providers are willing to engage with technical excellence centres (like Universities) to develop new approaches

Public entities and governments are often not fast on recognizing the value of bottom-up approaches.

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