Dr. García Cuyàs: “Coordination between the different healthcare levels is a challenge, but the ICTs will help us”

Healthcare coordination between primary attention, specialised attention, health and social attention and mental health must enable us to pass between the different levels, according to the management of the pathology as its intensity and severity increase. The guides and routes of clinical practice based on consensus and the application of ICTs on the different levels of healthcare contribute to this integration. 

“The need to develop integration models is nothing new, but has become more urgent in the present context of change,” assured Dr. García Cuyàs during the i2TIC Meeting, Studies of Health Sciences and FòrumCIS. “Efforts must be made to integrate the information in order to treat it more efficiently and beneficially,” added the Health Department’s General Coordinator of ICT, who believes that healthcare integration is a key element in the present discussion on the sustainability of the health system, as well as transparency in information and account-rendering to the citizens.  

However, the wager on integration means that we have to overcome various technical and legal difficulties and others in the organisation of the environmental resistances and the development of the skills of the professionals of the health system. “The challenge now is to guarantee that we continue to move forward wilfully and with balance towards greater interoperability between the system’s key players,” according to the director of TicSalut. 

Information, integration and interaction to give support to the health system

At the present time, the Department of Health aims at interoperability, but while enhancing the management autonomy of each of the health centres. Specifically, the Catalonia Health Plan 2011-2015 establishes ICTs as an instrument of change to achieve the new healthcare model. 

The Health Plan, in fact, focuses on the citizens, who it involves and makes jointly accountable in healing their own health. The Fundació TicSalut and the Oficina d’Estàndards i Interoperabilitat work to turn the Shared Medical Record (HC3) into a network of information and services to facilitate integration among all the health and social agents (iSalut.cat) and to guarantee the necessary infrastructures and services to consolidate this new healthcare model.

The presentation went further into mobility and the different telemonitoring tools in the new non-attendance healthcare model, which are already progressively raising healthcare standards and the quality of life of the patients. However, Dr. García Cuyàs made a reflection to stress that “ICTs are an instrument at the service of the healthcare system, in which we must not lose sight of the professional’s contact with the citizens and enhance this framework of confidence despite the distances”.
 
Further information and access to the presentations of the FòrumCIS technical meeting at: http://forumcis.cat/i2tic