Sweden Uses HealthShare To Create And Deploy A National Electronic Health Record In Record Time

In 2008, Sweden signed contracts with its suppliers to begin development of a national electronic health record, one of the first of its kind in the world. Based on InterSystems HealthShare™ health information exchange platform, the National Patient Summary (NPÖ) is part of Sweden’s National IT Strategy for improving patient safety and quality of care. Sweden’s primary objective was to ensure that vital clinical information about each of its citizens could be securely accessible online to caregivers, regardless of time or location.

Sweden has seen rapid success. In a little more than one year the EHR was deployed in the first of the country’s 21 healthcare regions (Örebro). By the end of 2012, with the remaining healthcare districts online, Sweden will have a truly national EHR.

HealthShare was chosen for its proven reliability, scalability, and interoperability with existing healthcare systems. It took fewer than 10 developers and managers working on the NPÖ to bring the project to successful rollout under very tight time constraints.

HealthShare is giving caregivers a consolidated, browser-based display of patient demographics, medication lists, lab results, allergies, and other information considered most important for ensuring safe and effective care. The caregiver can simply click through to the detailed information behind the overview. Lab data is kept in a central repository, with the rest of the patient data retrieved as needed from local providers’ electronic medical record systems.

Going forward, plans for the NPÖ include using HealthShare for a citizen’s Web portal for access to their own healthcare information, and a smartphone interface giving clinicians truly anywhere/anytime access to the clinical data needed to ensure the highest level of care.