Indra to integrate management of the Valencian Regional Healthcare Agency's laboratories

Valencia will be the first autonomous region to introduce a homogeneous information system to support the management of its laboratory services. The Valencian regional healthcare agency awarded Indra, the premier IT company in Spain and a leading IT multinational in Europe, the implementation of an advanced software to integrate and expedite the management of laboratory services. The system will also incorporate applications oriented to improve citizen care, the work of the health personnel, doctors and staff

The development of the project will be carried out in cooperation with Cointec, a company specialised in software development for laboratories. The pilot test will take place in 7 out of the 25 hospitals that make up Valencia’s regional healthcare network: La Fe, Clínico, Malvarrosa y Doctor Moliner, located in Valencia; Elda, in Denia, La Plana and Vinaroz in Castellón.

This way, a single corporate software will guarantee the homogenous evolution of the management in hospital laboratories, thus improving the efficiency and quality of its analysis services. Besides this, the new system will give round-the-clock support in an integrated and automated way to all the functions the laboratory services require: electronic request, registration, reception and classification; and connection with auto analyzers, delivery of results and reports with electronic signature. The project also includes connection with information systems and applications of the hospitals and primary healthcare centres for the reception of requests and delivery of results.

Reduction of tests

Among its many advantages, special attention must be given to a smart system of test processing which allows automatic inclusion of new tests based on the results of previous ones included in the request. In addition, it facilitates automatic identification of non relevant tests, that is, those which are not necessary according to temporary validity criteria or because previous analysis already provide the information results from other previous analysis. The design also includes a tool to locate duplicate records of patients and merge them into one.

Furthermore, the new system allows communicating patients via sms or email when an analysis is completed, alerts of certain levels of pathologies or detection of bacteria in toilets, among others. In addition to this, requests which are not urgent but deserve immediate attention in accordance with previously defined criteria, such as type of service, will have priority.

The project will significantly improve the quality of the service. This way, for instance, tests will not have to be repeated if recently conducted and citizens will have access to updated results online in the event of an emergency. They will also be shown the evolution of the results in a graph. On the other hand, doctors will have access to records and all relevant information as well as exchange information with other centres. The statistical analysis of the information will facilitate classification of risk groups and the implementation of preventive actions.

Leadership in health systems

Currently Indra’s health care management systems provide two thirds of the national population with services. We can highlight avant-garde projects such as the electronic prescription in Andalusia to replace the traditional prescription with the sanitary card, Abucasis, a system which facilitates the unification of all the information of the medical records of the Valencian Community or IANUS, the health platform for the integration of electronic clinical records of the Servizo Galego de Saúde (SERGAS).

Indra’s technologies and knowledge applied to health are based on its iSalud platform which specialises in Telemedicine, digital Imagery, electronic prescription or electronic medical records, among others. This platform is the fruit of cumulative experience in the development of projects for private and public sectors, at both national and international levels, which translates into an opportunity thanks to system interoperability after decentralization in health care.

Among the company’s latest projects we can mention: SESCAM’s digital imaging systems (Ykonos), the systems implemented for the Ministry of Defence and the regional government of Aragon as well as the pilot project of the electronic prescription in Cantabria.