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Hospital IT director builds in-house HIS
Telemed system remarkably beats commercial IT prices
The Torrevieja Salud Hospital, in southern Valencia, serves a population of 200,000 – but this swells to 600,000 in holiday periods.
Luis Barcia Albacar
In early planning, it was decided that the hospital would have its own computer platform, and would also become paper-less. The hospital’s in-house IT staff subsequently built a robust, end-to-end hospital information system using commodity, off-the-shelf developer tools, software, and technologies from Microsoft. The resulting system has been created for a fraction of what most hospitals spend on commercially produced IT solutions.
The system also enables teleradiology and teledermatology. Physicians on duty at home can receive urgent requests and send back reports. ‘Recently we have the surf-table – a mobile laptop computer with incorporated washable and resistant screen, which allows access to data by a surgeon in the operating theatre. It can also be used by a patient as an entertainment station. The same versatility is provided by the PC Tablet, another innovative mobile device that is compact and light, washable and resistant to blows and which, in emergencies, means we can see patients in different cubicles at the same time, and check their clinic history, change it, ask for tests, and so on.’
Our technology’s heart
Florence was born with the Torrevieja Hospital, Luis Barcia Albacar proudly points out. ‘The computer system was created by our Systems Director, using Microsoft tools, at low cost, very below other programmes on the market. Besides being created here, for total synchronization it is also constantly adapted for organizational needs and the software of the other companies that provide the hospital with equipment.’
* The hospital was built on public grounds by a Private Finance Initiative (PFI), which will also provide healthcare services to the area for 15 years. However, after five years, according to an administrative concession, the hospital will be owned by the Health Department of the Valencia Community Government, and the PFI will be managing public funding.
This article was published on 04/30/2008