Last update: August 15, 1996

Finland A summary of the National IT strategy for Health and Social Care in Finland. As a response to the global discussion on the Information Society, the Finnish Government set up the national Committee for the Information Society in Health and Social Care Services to develop a strategy to take advantage of this challenging and promising technology. The guiding principles are, on the one hand, the citizen aspect of equality, accessibility and transparency of social and health care services, and on the other, the service provider aspect of effectiveness and efficiency of the services offered. The strategy comprises a set of action lines which are to be developed into strategic tasks or projects.The most important goals are: to support the continuity of the Finnish (or "Nordic") welfare policy to move the present national health and social care service system, faster, to the information society state to build a national health care network to develop local health and social care networks to develop value added services for national and local networks to support the independence of citizens in the utilisation of services, and to support citizens equal possibilities to utilise networks and network services The way in which this will be achieved will be to develop a seamless care service model and an architecture for health and social services, and for the model to be used at local, regional and national levels as a backbone. The Ministry of Social Affairs and Health has the responsibility to develop the national health care network and its connection to international knowledge services. Municipalities have the duty to organise both health and social care services and the responsibility to build the neccessary infrastructure (networks etc.) for the seamless care process. Other means of achieving the goals will include the development of an open front-line user interface for citizens; the involvement of IT companies, universities and the Ministry of Health in developing value added software and other services for networks and

to commence a university-level education programme in social and healthcare information technology. Underpinning the strategy will be the harmonisation of data security rules at national level. The working group has been asked to deliver its report by March 1996 and more information will be published in a future issue of this Journal. Health Care Multimedia Project by TEKES Technology Development Centre TEKES, Finland, is launching a national programme to implement Health Care Multimedia. The programme expands the bigger National Multimedia Programme to new applications, service concepts and services in Health Care, creating growing utilisation of the well-developed telecommunication infrastructure in Finland. The programme under preparation is based on a company-centred consortium co-operating with the organisations of care delivery, and is aimed to support the Information Society Action Plan of the Ministry of Health and Welfare in Finland. The programme, which is targetted to exportable concepts, makes use of many existing EU RTD results and on-going projects; it is also open to EU-level and other international expansions. For further information please contact Simo Luiro, Regional Office Director TEKES, PO Box 227 FIN-33201 Tampere, Finland Tel: +358-31-2120191 Fax: +358-31-2148499 E-Mail: Simo.Luiro@tekes.fi Helsinki Area Health Care Information Management Reform The Helsinki City Health Department, Helsinki University Central Hospital and the Uusimaa Hospital District have set up a HHU Committee' which is charged with restructuring specialised care in this area. The Task Force has investigated various possibilities for improved co-operation between clinical specialties and support services. One of these activities has been the establishment of an information management (IM) strategy which is based on general strategic guidelines on how to organise care in this area. The work has been carried out in a working group. The members of the group are the respective IT Managers of the care

provider organisations of the area and some of the General Managers of these organisations. VTT Information Technology has acted as a consultant in this activity. The core aspects of the proposed information management (IM) are: IM is of strategic importance and is therefore the responsibility of all management (inc. general management) IM is a function, not an organisational unit, i.e. some functions should be centralised, some decentralised Information technology is a strategic tool in streamlining (re-engineering) healthcare processes, therefore, the IM strategy seeks to empower the various clinics and support units to employ IT for effectiveness, efficiency and quality purposes while requiring the general mangement to provide a minimal set of guidelines to assure adherence to common concepts' like architecture, interoperability and data security These common concepts' should be developed and updated at the area level. A number of strategically important projects have been identified as means of achieving these goals. These projects include information systems supporting seamless care and management information systems based on the data warehousing concept for improved resource management and continuous quality improvement. Core concepts on which seamless care is based are clinical service lines' in the case of one organisational unit and the whole area respectively, thus paving the way towards the utilisation of clinical guidelines'. Below these functional goals is an architectural goal based on open systems and systems integration. The purpose of an open architecture is to enable healthcare organisations to acquire the best application products instead of building solutions from scratch or through extensive tailoring. Interoperability between applications is achieved by application of the common concepts' guidelines mentioned above. For further information please contact: Information Manager Seppo Immonen, Health Office of Helsinki, Siltasaarenkatu 13, 00530 Helsinki. Tel: +358-0-7099 2265 Fax: +358-0-7099 2357 E-Mail: Seppo.Immonen@TERVV. HKI.HKI.elisa.fi

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