Inproceedings,
Interoperability prototype between hospitals and general practitioners in Switzerland
Medinfo 2010, Cape Town, South Africa, IOS press, (2010)
Abstract
Interoperability in data exchange has the potential to improve the care processes and decrease costs of the health care sys- tem. Many countries have related eHealth initiatives in prepa- ration or already implemented. In this area, Switzerland has yet to catch up. Its health system is fragmented, because of the federated nature of cantons. It is thus more difficult to coordi- nate efforts between the existing healthcare actors. In the Me- dicoordination project a pragmatic approach was selected: integrating several partners in healthcare on a regional scale in French speaking Switzerland. In parallel with the Swiss eHealth strategy, currently being elaborated by the Swiss con- federation, particularly medium-sized hospitals and general practitioners were targeted in Medicoordination to implement concrete scenarios of information exchange between hospitals and general practitioners with a high added value. In this pa- per we focus our attention on a prototype implementation of one chosen scenario: the discharge summary. Although simple in concept, exchanging release letters shows small, hidden difficulties due to the multi-partner nature of the project. The added value of such a prototype is potentially high and it is now important to show that interoperability can work in prac- tice.
