Archives

Unique identification profiles in the information system used by the regional government's centralised health service will be assigned to more than one million citizens, via their healthcards. The system is also used by Extremadura's 9 public hospitals, 100 primary care centres and 300 general practitioners.

This has been made possible due to the implementation of the Civitas solution, which was developed by Steria in association with the regional governments of Extremadura and Murcia. The advantage of Civitas lies in its interoperability with the information systems of the different healthcare organisations and centres. The regions required a system that would meet all their needs: digital registration of new patients or new centres, a catalogue of centres/hospitals and the treatments they provide (surgery, paediatrics, etc.) and the ability to comply with the universal vocation of the public healthcare system, etc.

Steria, an end-to-end IT services provider, brought its technological expertise and operating know-how – acquired through 15 years of experience working in healthcard and medical organisation management – to the project. Civitas is designed to be fully compatible with the systems used by the different regions to manage healthcare and to be flexible enough to adapt to any organisational or strategic changes.

In addition, Civitas enables Extremadura citizens to be directed towards appropriate medical services and allows for the integrated management of all health service resources, human and material. Its role is to accurately define the patient population and its geographical distribution and use this data to efficiently organise the physical and human resources of the healthcare system. In addition to improving patient access to healthcare, Civitas will also enable the Extremadura region to streamline its expenditure on health.

Extremadura's adoption of this healthcard solution, which provides every patient with a unique identification profile, meets the recommendations of the European Commission in terms of rolling out patient medical records. This system will enable healthcare providers to share clinical information (medical history, allergies, medication, pathologies) for instant access in the event of hospitalisation, emergencies, surgery, etc. Civitas is a first step in offering, in the near future, user services such as secure access to healthcare information via the Internet. Other regional governments in Spain are also in the process of completing their implementation of the Civitas system and will soon be in a position to benefit from the same advantages.

"We were actually the first regional government to implement this innovative solution," commented Guillermo Fernandez Vara, Extremadura Healthcare Counsellor. "It has become the mainstay of the Extremadura health information system, enabling us to define and plan healthcare service strategies and allowing medical providers to identify patients via a single number, regardless of their location in the region."

Steria and health
Steria, a leading partner of both public and private healthcare professionals, draws on its three core businesses of consulting, systems integration and managed services to help its customers achieve their goals to improve the quality of care provided and to streamline costs. The challenge lies in improving the management of medical centres, optimising patient care while protecting confidentiality and ensuring that health care professionals can share information in real time via secure, interoperable systems.
Steria has already implemented secure data exchange systems for health care authorities in Northern Ireland and Sweden, while the Spanish Ministry of Health has called on the Group to ensure the interoperability of the various health services of its autonomous regions.
In terms of hospital management, Steria has modernised and set up information systems for a number of public and private hospitals: Capio, the European hospital healthcare specialist; the Assistance Publique-Hôpitaux de Paris, the Hospices Civils de Lyon, Marie Lannelongue hospital and the Institut Montsouris in France; Mannheim, Kiel and Lübeck university hospitals in Germany; four hospitals in Salzburg, Austria; the San Juan de Dios hospitals, the Mutua de Accidentes hospitals in Saragossa and the San Roque hospital in the Canary Islands in Spain; and the Karolinska medical centre in Sweden, the country's largest hospital.