Parallel drawn with Middle East – regional healthcare providers would also benefit from latest software as numbers of Diabetics approach epidemic proportions
Dubai—February 15, 2012—InterSystems Corporation, a global leader in software for connected care, today announced that InterSystems HealthShare™ has been chosen to support health information exchange (HIE) throughout Denmark.
The Danish NSI (Nationalt Sundheds-IT), an agency operating under the Ministry of Health, is beginning development of a new service to link healthcare information systems used within Danish regions on a national level. The new HealthShare-based initiative enables the sharing of patient information between healthcare providers and government agencies countrywide.
This will help the Danish Governments address chronic disease including diabetes recently described as a spiralling epidemic with invisible economic burdens of absenteeism and high cost of care. According to the International Diabetes Federation (IDF) the number of people suffering with diabetes in the Middle East and North Africa is expected to double in less than 20 years, with a recent study reporting the number of people living with diabetes is expected to rise from 366 million in 2011 to 552 million by 2030.
In the Middle East and North Africa Region, 32.6 million or 9.1 percent of the population now have diabetes, the IDF said. It added that this number is expected to double, with estimates that there are as many as 19.2 million people still undiagnosed.
InterSystems HealthShare is a strategic healthcare informatics platform that enables the sharing of patient information via seamless, bi-directional integration, using active analytics to drive decision-making, and unlocking the unstructured data that is found in patient records. Speaking from InterSystems’ regional office in Dubai Healthcare City, Michel Amous, InterSystems Country Manager, Middle East, commented, “We are seeing considerable interest in local, regional and national HIE projects around the world. This Danish project perfectly illustrates how care providers in the Middle East could benefit from unified healthcare.”
“With an aging population and the prevalence of diabetes in the region, sharing information amongst health professionals to improve the quality of care is essential. Utilizing a breakthrough solution like HealthShare is clearly the way forward for the Middle East,” added Amous.
Denmark’s new National Patient Index (NPI) will enhance clinical safety, improve search capabilities and provide a shortcut to securely accessing patient data. All of these aspects are key to the successful treatment of patients who are acutely ill, whose treatment may involve multiple complex processes, or who are previously unknown to a clinic.
The NPI establishes an index of documents, stemming from regional health records and numerous national records. These can then be accessed via the Sundhedsjournalen national clinician portal. The Danish security components in this system ensure that confidential health information is visible only to those with legal access to the data.
For InterSystems, the new initiative increases the company’s footprint in the Nordic market. “We are very pleased that we have been selected to supply software that is an essential part of the Danish healthcare infrastructure. We bring experience from the HealthShare-based Swedish NPÖ project and look forward to working on this implementation. HealthShare provides a flexible approach and will serve as a complement to the existing Danish solutions” said Paul Grabscheid, Vice President, InterSystems Corporation.
The mandate is provided by the NSI, an agency under the Ministry of Health. The Authority has signed an agreement with Systematic, a systems integrator that has extensive experience in bringing advanced systems together and connecting technology partners to achieve the best possible results. The requirements of the NSI were clear and InterSystems was chosen as a key technology provider because of its experience and the proven capability to meet the extensive criteria.
According to Henrik Jespersen, Vice President at Systematic, “Close cooperation and a flexible approach are essential, not least because the project has a tight timeframe. InterSystems provides a good combination of two crucial components: InterSystems HealthShare, a software platform that adheres to international standards, and implementation services that can ensure a successful project.”
About InterSystems
InterSystems Corporation is the worldwide leader in breakthrough solutions for connected care. With headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and offices in 23 countries, InterSystems provides advanced technologies for breakthrough applications. InterSystems HealthShare™ is a strategic platform for healthcare informatics and the creation of an Electronic Health Record on a regional or national scale. InterSystems Caché® is a high performance object database that makes applications faster and more scalable. InterSystems Ensemble® is a seamless platform for integration and the development of connectable applications. InterSystems DeepSee™ is software that makes it possible to embed real-time business intelligence capabilities in transactional applications. InterSystems TrakCare™ is a Web-based healthcare information system that rapidly delivers the benefits of an Electronic Patient Record. For more information, visit InterSystemsME.com.
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