Cross-Institutional Pathway Guidance - Chance or Extra Burden?

In this paper, we examine requirements, show potential user interfaces and describe a prototypical development for a Pathway Navigator App that guides the patient through healthcare episodes. Our use case is a fictional patient requiring surgery for a hip total endoprosthesis. Fundamental is the provision of appointment information and the option to contact the healthcare provider for rescheduling. This implied an architecture which was more complicated than expected. We realized an HL7 interface for appointment data from hospital information systems; no comparable standard was found for GP IT systems. The future Swiss Electronic Patient Dossier could enhance the integration of the Path App within a broader health-IT ecosystem.

Components for Material Master Data Management in Swiss Hospitals.

The material master data catalogue in large hospitals may well exceed 50'000 articles required at one or another location for patient diagnosis and treatment. Most hospitals use a commercial material management IT system to deal with orders, eProcurement, incoming goods, warehouse management, internal commissioning and distribution. An analysis in three Swiss hospitals (including a hospital chain) demonstrated however, that despite existing standards maintenance of the material master data catalogue is often done manually based on different incoming formats such as csv, mail etc. We present components, which may enable seamless master data update using standardized formats and discuss in detail current barriers within hospital supply to give finally recommendations how to overcome them.

Last Mile Towards Efficient Healthcare Delivery in Switzerland: eHealth Enabled Applications Could Speed Up the Care Process.

A precise and timely care delivery depends on an efficient triage performed by primary care providers and smooth collaboration with other medical specialities. In recent years telemedicine gained increasing importance for efficient care delivery. It's use, however, has been limited by legal issues, missing digital infrastructures, restricted support from health insurances and the digital divide in the population. A new era towards eHealth and telemedicine starts with the establishment of national eHealth regulations and laws. In Switzerland, a nation-wide digital infrastructure and electronic health record will be established. But appropriate healthcare apps to improve patient care based on this infrastructure remain rare. In this paper, we present two applications (self-anamnesis and eMedication assistant) for eHealth enabled care delivery which have the potential to speed up diagnosis and treatment.

Integrated Care Processes Designed for the Future Healthcare System.

Previous studies showed that a stronger focus on integrated care models is required, targeting at a seamless coordinated care reaching patients even at home and thus establish patient centered and patient driven innovation activities. Such integrated care model is important among others for ensuring traceability that is necessary when problems during treatment occur or in cases of product counterfeiting for ensuring patient safety. The objective of our work is to realize an efficient, continuous care process, considering an optimal, end-to-end treatment path. In this paper, we describe the process how to pave the way for developing technologies for realizing a cross-sector treatment pathway. Following a multi-stakeholder principle and by applying requirement analysis and world café methodology we designed first concepts and strategies.