Swiss Post today took a major step in the e-health market by signing up two major partners for its digital healthcare information service ‘vivates’.
Health Info Net AG (HIN), set up by the Swiss Medical Association (FMH), and the Professional Association of Swiss Pharmacists (Ofac) have decided to enter into a contractual relationship with vivates, the modular eHealth solution from Swiss Post that provides electronic transmission of confidential health information.
With HIN, vivates has selected a well-established partner of physicians and health institutions in Switzerland. Most healthcare professionals in Switzerland already have a HIN electronic identity, enabling them to register with vivates without additional expense in the future.
Ofac will integrate the vivates Care Plan and Medication modules, connecting around 70% of all pharmacies who already use the Ofac system to vivates. Synergies between the two networks can be efficiently exploited as vivates and the Ofac services are connected with one another.
Swiss Post said it has worked in the eHealth sector for a number of years, and with vivates, offers a leading solution. In the past year, the Aarau and Baden cantonal hospitals became vivates customers, just as the Cantons of Geneva, Vaud and Ticino did before them.
With vivates, Swiss Post offers a modular eHealth solution which can cover all information flows between the various healthcare service providers, such as those relating to medication or care plans. Currently vivates consists of five modules, which can be combined as required. Each module covers the specific requirements of individual target groups within the healthcare sector.
With the referral module, for instance, doctors can quickly, simply and securely transfer their patients to hospital. The transfers to hospital are done electronically, even if the doctor has authorized the transfer by letter or fax. Swiss Post digitizes transfers received confidentially and transmits them electronically using vivates. There are similar modules for the transfer of reports, care plans and medication data between service providers.
The most comprehensive module includes a complete electronic patient record which can be viewed by the physicians authorized by the patients as well as by the patients themselves at any time.
Swiss Post stressed that the underlying technology used by vivates is highly secure, since all information transmitted is always encrypted and, as before, remains decentralized since it is stored locally by the various health service providers. Swiss Post merely ensures the secure conveyance of the information and consolidates the data on the platform.
Furthermore, Swiss Post has also launched an electronic allergy card app together with the Swiss Allergy Centre aha! and the Swiss Society for Allergology and Immunology (SSAI). The app allows the information users have recorded on the allergies to be seamlessly linked at a later stage to other vivates modules. This enables allergy sufferers to always have important information about their allergies and medication at hand, and this information can also be confirmed by a physician or a pharmacist.
Swiss Post emphasised that it sees huge potential in eHealth, with its vivates solution potentially saving several hundred million francs per year in healthcare costs through faster electronic administration processes.
