The Danish Health Portal

1
The Danish Health Portal

• Presentation overview
• Portal goals reasons for creating the portal
• Portal history the process so far
• The vision and plan for the future of the portal
• How to realise the plan
• Portal services what can users do
• Content feed the information in the portal
• The future some things to come

2
The Danish Health Portal

• Portal goals
• Give information about the Danish National Health
  Service to citizens and patients
• Serve as a unified hub for electronic
  communication between patients and the Health
  Service
• Offer professional information to health
  professionals
• Mediate information between Health Service
  organizations
• Provide a range of services to all its users
• Form a central and pioneering element in the
  Danish national IT strategy

3
The Danish Health Portal

• Portal history so far
• Conceived in summer 2001
• A month long process of clarifying and qualifying
  requirements
• Portal construction put out for tender spring
  2002 based on requirements specification
• 16 bidders - 5 chose to elaborate on initial
  offer
• 3 winner candidates, each invited to extensive
  negotiation talks over a 3 month period
• The winning contractor a collaboration headed
  by Mærsk Data - signed a comprehensive contract
  February 13 this year

4
The Danish Health Portal

• The vision and plan for the future
• The vision a unified portal for all
• Available, accessible, affordable !
• Open-ended, transparent for developers and users
  alike
• Secure from browser to backup storage
• The plan for realisation
• Staged/phased development and launch with each
  phase adding very significant content and
  services
• Scheduled launch of first phase portal at the end
  of this year
• Two more releases next year
• Further releases planned in 2005 and onwards gt

5
The Danish Health Portal

• How to realise the plan
• A portal framework based on open standards,
  published interfaces and distributed services
  (web services) to facilitate integration and
  promote vendor competition
• A distributed, multi-tier editorial organization
  to allow content validation and quality assurance
  as close to the point of origin as possible. The
  portal will service regions, not dominate them.
• A user interface that is responsive to the
  different needs of citizens and health
  professionals, and adheres to common
  accessibility guidelines
• A large and diverse content base with many feed
  systems and comprehensive metadata annotation
  including health standards classification
• A system built to grow and evolve

6
The Danish Health Portal

• Services
• Information services (I-services)
• Regional portal domains
• News feeds
• Waiting list information
• GIS services (tour planning, map services)
• Quality declarations
• Pharmaceutical reference data (medicine guides)
• Interactive/Communicative services (K-services)
• Online scheduling of GP appointments
• Renewal of prescriptions
• Email contact to GP
• Access to online medicine profil
• Access to information on patient history
• Shared care support (EPR)
• Support for queries about the effects of
  polypharmacy
• And more !

7
The Danish Health Portal

• Services continued
• Regional portal domains
• Regions will have editorial control over defined
  areas of the portal
• Information published will include guidelines for
  patients and clinicians and general information
  on the region and its policies
• News feeds
• Edited feeds based on public service information
  from governmental and regional agencies
• Topical coverage of health related issues such as
  controversial pharmaceuticals
• Waiting list information
• Updated information on waiting lists at Danish
  hospitals. The information will be maintained by
  the Danish Ministry of Health

8
The Danish Health Portal

• Services continued
• GIS services
• Pinpointing service to help locate health care
  providers on geographical maps
• Route planner to assist navigation
• Quality declarations
• Hospital units and other health care units will
  be able to stipulate their quality of service
  goals
• The results of patient feedback on individual
  units will also be published
• Pharmaceutical reference information
• Reference information describing name,
  manufacturer, side effects, etc.
• Interaction analysis of drugs selected by users
  will help avoid negative effects of polypharmacy

9
The Danish Health Portal

• Services continued
• Online scheduling of GP appointments
• Users can schedule appointments via the portal
  which in turn interfaces with different GP
  systems
• Confirmed appointments will be reflected in the
  user health calendar, another portal feature
• Renewal of prescriptions
• Users can apply for a renewal of prescription
  with their GP or other medical doctor
• Upon confirmation, the prescription drugs ordered
  can be forwarded by mail or messenger or picked
  up
• Email contact to GP
• Users can consult their GP using email
• Similar to telephone consultation but
  asynchronous

10
The Danish Health Portal

• Services continued
• Access to online medicine profil
• This service will allow users and health care
  professionals to access a detailed profile of
  medicine use and history for each patient
• A separate service which will be integrated into
  the portal when completed, currently scheduled
  for middle of 2004
• Access to information about patient history
• The National Patient Database (LPR) will be
  accessible from the portal
• As the LPR is upgraded and extended, so will
  portal access to it
• Electronic Patient Journal (EPR)
• In the portals first phase, this will form an
  important pilot project
• In later phases, it will be a center
  functionality giving health care professionals
  and patients online access to EPRs

11
The Danish Health Portal

• Services some ongoing subprojects
• KPLL is a laboratory that services GPs in the
  Greater Copenhagen area
• Over the coming months, KPLL will be ready to
  offer its clients laboratory reports through the
  Health Portal
• The underlying technology will be a W3C compliant
  web service, the exchange format XML
• This service will later be nation-wide, building
  on the experience from this KPLL initiative
• Patient treatment process support
• The first step is Health Portal support for the
  pregnancy and prenatal process in a few selected
  regions in Denmark
• Later, this will be a nation-wide initiative and
  support for more processes will follow, including
  support for such chronic diseases as diabetes and
  allergies

12
The Danish Health Portal

• Content feed
• Regionalized information is written, validated
  and submitted for publication by the individual
  region.
• A centralized editorial staff serves as hub for
  region feeds through a shared CMS.
• Document review and approval can take place both
  within regions and between regions and central
  staff.
• Automated feed from third parties regulated by
  detailed contract stipulating quality of service
  (QoS) requirements among others
• Annotation through automatic content analysis and
  auto-tagging human editing and review still
  required

13
The Danish Health Portal

• Some things to come
• Tighter integration with existing systems for
  Health Service communication through adoption of
  new standards (MedCOM XML)
• Improved metadata annotation through a more
  extensive thesaurus and better health care
  standards support
• An electronic patient journal to support shared
  care throughout the Danish Health Service
• From 2005 on, any useful and viable addition that
  can be incorporated in the open, standards based
  framework that underlies the Danish Health Portal