Focus on cost effectiveness and improved patient care

Everyone knows that different care settings require different information systems which often prevent patient demographics and medical information from being organized and stored in a standard system. InterComponentWare (ICW), a leading eHealth company, delivers comprehensive solutions that provide connectivity for existing health information systems facilitating health information exchange. ICW’s components connect a variety of information systems in hospitals and enable a consolidated view of patient data and records. This enhances the quality of treatment in hospitals and in particular it guarantees optimization of costs as well as investment protection when it comes to the information systems deployed. As ICW connects hospital systems that were previously isolated from one another without having to replace existing software, there is no need for expensive data migration and costly staff training. ICW provides a system integration solution covering different hospitals with various partners, including providers of hospital information systems (HIS). As such, ICW creates new opportunities to organize and improve medical and financial processes within the hospital network.
Additionally by integrating the hospital sector with the eHealth infrastructure of the future, ICW optimizes communication between various sectors in the health system.

Technical implementation

ICW’s Professional Exchange Server offers an Enterprise Master Patient Index (ICW MPI) linking together patient records referring to the same (physical) person. It is possible to retrieve medical information on any patient in these clinics via the Virtual Medical Record (ICW VMR). A medical service bus (ICW MSB) is included as a plug-in in the local hospital’s communication server, which processes patient information and forwards it to the Master Patient Index and the Virtual Medical Record. The document management adapter (ICW DMA) provides the patient record with access to the documents stored in the hospital’s primary systems. Finally the LifeSensor adapter (LSA) connects the Virtual Medical Record to the patient’s electronic health record and thus ensures a smooth exchange of information between hospitals, patients and physician practices.

ICW Enterprise Master Patient Index

ICW’s Enterprise Master Patient Index (MPI) enables patient IDs to be linked together, when they are used for a distinct patient in various health information systems. It forms the basis of all communication across various health systems. Smart matching methods based on demographic patient data allow associations to a central reference data set. The MPI stores the patient’s up-to-date personal information, which can be synchronized at any time across the entire hospital network to avoid duplicates. The MPI also offers a query interface.

ICW Virtual Medical Record

ICW’s Virtual Medical Record (VMR) enables doctors or medical staff access to any patients’ medical data within a hospital network. Health professionals are able to view data such as case information, diagnoses and documents. An amazingly simple search interface offers quick access to the patients' information. The documents can either remain within the clinical information systems referenced by the VMR, or can be transmitted and stored inside the VMR. As such, the VMR provides a consolidated view of patient data and documents.

ICW Document Management Adapter

The Document Management Adapter (DMA) allows patient documents to be accessed in the clinical information system. The DMA requests the documents from the primary system that produced them in order to be viewed in the VMR. All common document formats are supported as well as CDA documents. The DMA has internal caching facilities to display documents quickly and is capable of connecting various hospital information systems and storage devices. It furthermore offers connectivity to the CHILI server for viewing and editing DICOM images stemming from Ultrasound, MRT or CT devices.