First Master Patient Index in Switzerland

Leading Swiss Private Clinic Group opts for ICW Professional Suite

Zurich, June 2, 2008 – After an extensive tender procedure, Hirslanden, the leading Swiss private clinic group, has opted for the master patient index in the professional suite offered by eHealth specialist InterComponentWare (ICW). The proven ICW solution for the integration of heterogenous hospital technology environments will be used in the 13 private clinics and 100 centers of excellence and specialized institutes of the Hirslanden group, making Hirslanden the first clinic group in Switzerland to use a master patient index solution.

Unambiguous Identification
The Hirslanden clinics already use modern IT systems to store the medical information of their patients. However, up to now, the information could only be used by the clinic where it was stored. During the development of the Hirslanden information system framework (HIS Framework), the need for and the importance of a master patient index (MPI) as a basic service for the ICT architecture had become apparent. The MPI of the ICW Professional Suite now allows the Hirslanden clinics to establish a foundation for the reliable and secure exchange of medical information between their various facilities: The MPI aligns the master data from the various systems of the clinic group and, if they match, assigns it to a particular patient. This way, the medical information can later be consolidated in a virtual patient record that can be used by all facilities and that includes all treatments of a patient in any of the Hirslanden clinics.

Current systems remain operational
The ICW solution does not require a replacement of the currently used systems, since existing standards such as HL7 are used for the information exchange. The MPI offers extremely high performance; tests have shown that it is able to provide stable response times of less than one second, even with 100 million patient data records and queries of up to 1,000 concurrent users. This means that the solution can also be used for larger patient populations, including the implementation of the national Swiss eHealth Strategy.

“The Hirslanden private clinic group provides first class medical service and always focuses on the latest developments. This is why we also see ourselves as pioneers for innovative technologies; Hirslanden is the first clinic group in Switzerland to use a master patient index”, explained Magnus Oetiker, Manager of Hospital Services of the Hirslanden private clinic group. “We chose the ICW Professional Suite, not only because it can improve the quality of our master data and support our framework, but also because it offers solutions for the exchange of medical information that can even support the implementation of the national eHealth strategy."

Martin Fuchs, CEO of InterComponentWare Switzerland, adds: “I am pleased that our master patient index, which is already being used in Germany and the US, will now also be used in Switzerland. This shows that our eHealth solutions can easily be adjusted to the special requirements of a country's health system and can thereby help improve the quality of medical information."

For additional information, please contact:

InterComponentWare, Inc.
Anne Marie Heil
Tel: ++1-610-933-8065
Fax: ++1-480-247-5402
E-Mail: anne.marie.heil@icw-global.com

InterComponentWare AG
Dirk Schuhmann
Tel.: ++49 (0)6227 385 133
Fax: ++49 (0)6227 385 199
E-mail: Dirk.Schuhmann@icw.de

About Hirslanden private clinic group:
The Hirslanden-Kliniken is the leading private clinic group in Switzerland. The group continuously adapts its medical technology infrastructure to current developments. All clinics are well equipped with diagnostic tools and also offer interventional radiology. Computer tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) are standard. The extremely well trained staff of the clinics offers individual care in a pleasant environment. The system of practitioners with hospital affiliation allows for a very wide scope of specialized medical services. Patients can select the physician they trust from more than 1,300 certified physicians. By creating interdisciplinary medical teams (centers of excellence) in the most important medical disciplines, it is possible to provide patients with comprehensive medical care. Due to the latest surgical technologies and tools, the average hospitalization time in the clinics can be reduced to a minimum.
For more information and key data, please refer to www.hirslanden.ch

About InterComponentWare
InterComponentWare AG (ICW) is a leading international eHealth specialist with locations in Germany, the United States, Austria, Switzerland, and Bulgaria. Its solutions for networking the various players in the healthcare system lastingly improve process-oriented communication and data integrity, and therefore also the quality of healthcare. Among other things, ICW develops and distributes software and hardware components for the healthcare IT infrastructure for electronic health cards, the LifeSensor personal health record as well as networking solutions for hospitals and physician offices. As part of the bIT4health consortium, ICW provided important consulting services for the implementation of the electronic health card in Germany, is involved in the Austrian eCard project and has recently won the pilot project for the national health card in Bulgaria.

This release was published on openPR.