The Virgin Macarena Hospital in Seville has been implementing through the 'Heraldo Project' a system to alert specialists by SMS or email on their patient's medical test results in case these appear to be serious.

The aim is hence for the specialist who ordered the tests to receive more quickly and securely this information which requires priority attention because the results are unexpectedly abnormal or compatible with a serious pathology. The information is sent by the various diagnosis units of the hospital (laboratories, radiology, pathological anatomy, etc).

In practice the functioning of the alert system varies according to the diagnosis unit. For instance in the pathological anatomy department, each time the pathologist validates a code which matches any of the codes included in a pre-defined table of critical pathologies, an SMS along with two emails are sent to the phone number and email address provided beforehand by the specialist who ordered the test. Differently, in the radio diagnosis, biochemistry, haematology, nuclear medicine and anaesthesiology departments - all the other hospital departments included in the project to date - the system is 'manual'; it is on the heads of these departments to decide on whether to send an alert.

The specialist receives the message personally, directly and instantaneously. In the alert text the name of the emitting diagnosis unit appears together with the health record number of the patient. In this way it becomes easier for the specialist to identify the origin of the message. The use of the health record number preserves the confidentiality of the information, while the absence of clinical data makes it possible to send the messages without encryption, nor other security measures.

It is worth noting that the full report is conveyed simultaneously to the SMS and emails, through traditional channels (electronic or paper). The redundancy of the communication process considerably improves the security of the procedure. Although participation in this scheme is optional for specialists, their acceptance shows that the number of participants will grow gradually. At the moment the system is being expanded to the primary care unit of the hospital.

According to the news article issued by Health Department of the Autonomous Government of Andalusia, with the Heraldo Project the Macarena Hospital will increase its response capacity in forwarding test results, ensuring faster treatment for patients under conditions of maximum security and data confidentiality, with the appropriate means to prioritise serious pathologies.

 

Further information: 

• Original news article - Health Portal of the Autonomous Government of Andalusia (in Spanish)