To expand its portfolio in the area of eHealth, Swiss Post will make use of the Siemens Healthineers eHealth Solutions(1) in the future. The eHealth solution offered by Swiss Post, which includes the electronic patient record, will provide secure networking between patients and players in the healthcare industry. Working in partnership with Siemens Healthineers will enable Swiss Post to provide new eHealth services for its customers. Siemens Healthineers has already put a number of major eHealth projects in place in Europe, including a large proportion of the electronic health record in Austria. In this case, eHealth Solutions assists physicians, hospitals, care facilities, and pharmacists with accessing important healthcare data relating to their patients. There are also further projects in Denmark, Spain and Germany.
The electronic patient record makes it possible to consult patient data regardless of time and place. Patients can decide for themselves who in the healthcare continuum can access their medical documents and data, e.g. discharge reports, x-rays, medication summaries, or details of allergies. In Switzerland, electronic patient records are maintained locally rather than centrally. They are made available via regional, organizational groupings of facilities, like hospitals, rest homes, medical practices, pharmacies, or rehabilitation clinics.(2) As a leading provider of a complete solution to network players in Switzerland's healthcare sector, Swiss Post serves as a professional partner to the country's Cantons (federal states). Swiss Post's eHealth solution is tailored to the special characteristics and peculiarities of Switzerland's healthcare market, which includes seamlessly integrating a range of IT systems.
Siemens Healthineers eHealth Solutions contain components needed to share medical data securely between facilities. Siemens Healthineers not only provides the software but also the expertise to help with cooperative healthcare between practice-based physicians and hospitals, for example. The solution is scalable and ranges from networking different departments within a hospital to networking entire regions and countries. Siemens Healthineers eHealth Solutions can also be used with heterogeneous and changing IT infrastructure.
"Making relevant healthcare data available exactly where it is needed is the basis for a lasting improvement to healthcare," says Arthur Kaindl, Head of Digital Products, Siemens Healthineers. "All the players involved must first be digitally networked, to enable the patient to be considered comprehensively and thus achieve a better diagnosis and reach better treatment decisions. We're looking forward to working with Swiss Post on this project."
Siemens Healthineers eHealth Solutions is a product of ITH Icoserve technology for healthcare GmbH, Innsbruck, Austria, a subsidiary of Siemens Healthineers.
About Siemens Healthineers
Siemens Healthineers enables healthcare providers worldwide to increase value by empowering them on their journey towards expanding precision medicine, transforming care delivery, improving patient experience and digitalizing healthcare. A leader in medical technology, Siemens Healthineers is constantly innovating its portfolio of products and services in its core areas of diagnostic and therapeutic imaging and in laboratory diagnostics and molecular medicine. Siemens Healthineers is also actively developing its digital health services and enterprise services.In fiscal 2017, which ended on September 30, 2017, Siemens Healthineers generated revenue of €13.8 billion and profit of €2.5 billion and has about 48,000 employees worldwide.
About Swiss Post’s eHealth portfolio
Swiss Post has been working with leading technology partners for a number of years to develop secure digital solutions for a state-of-the-art healthcare system. Thanks to its modular eHealth portfolio, authorized healthcare professionals can access and exchange patient data quickly and easily. This ensures the relevant data is available regardless of time and place, which helps simplify collaboration between players in the healthcare industry and improve patient safety. The individual services reflect the processes in the treatment chain efficiently and securely, which saves costs. Several Cantons and more than 100 institutions already rely on the Swiss Post eHealth solution. In addition to the eHealth solution, its services for the healthcare industry include logistical services like the transport of medications.
1. eHealth products from Siemens Healthineers are not commercially available in all countries. Please contact your local Siemens Healthineers sales representative for the most current information.
2. Source: https://www.post.ch/en/business/a-z-of-subjects/industry-solutions/industry-solution-healthcare/patient-record