Digital Self Care improves chronic care and makes life easier for care providers and patients

Published: 02/09/2010

ESPOO/HELSINKI, FINNLAND - (HealthTech Wire / News) - The first evaluation of a new digital health service for citizens of the Finnish city of Espoo shows that it can significantly reduce workload for doctors while at the same time involving patients far more actively into the care process. The solution provided by Tieto integrates Tieto’s information systems with the citizen portal of the Espoo municipality, giving patients easy access to both their data and to their doctors and nurses.

The Digital Self Care service is primarily aimed at chronically ill patients, for example patients with chronic heart failure, patients with diabetes or patients with chronic inflammatory diseases. These patients benefit from a close interaction with their nurses and doctors. “Our Digital Self Care service makes this close interaction possible without ever more phone calls and appointments”, says Jukka Kirjavainen, Development Director at Tieto Healthcare & Welfare.

After having agreed on going digital, patient, doctor and nurse form a ‘digital care team’. Together, a common care plan is set up and made available online so that care providers and patients are constantly aware of the goals of therapy and what to do to reach these goals. This includes, for example, recommendations on medication, physical activity, nutrition or weight management. Through the information systems of hospitals, health centres, or other care facilities, doctors and nurses can make relevant data, like laboratory results, accessible for the patient and comment on the results in terms of what they mean for further treatment. The patient can access information and comments via a secure internet connection through the health channel of the municipality’s citizen portal. He can also get in contact with his doctor or his nurse directly in case of difficulties.

Evaluation shows multiple benefits of Digital Self Care

The Digital Self Care Service was implemented in the city of Espoo in summer 2009. “We have results from a first evaluation available now, and they show that doctors and nurses really like the solution because it makes life so much easier for them”, says Kirjavainen. For example, although only 0.4% of the city’s 40 000 chronically ill patients have gone online so far, care providers have witnessed a reduction of phone calls in the magnitude of 2500 on a yearly calculation. This makes work of medical professionals more efficient, since they can decide when exactly to deal with a patient request. 

Patients, too, are happy with the new opportunities: “They feel more in control of their disease, and they like the idea that they can contact their doctor directly without having to call or schedule an appointment.” Although unnecessary appointments can be avoided, there is a closer interaction between all participants in the care process which in turn will lead to better disease control, fewer complications and reduced treatment costs.

Deep integration is the key

Technologically, a deep integration into the information systems of the care providers is a prerequisite for successful digital care. The professional module of the Digital Self Care service application is part of Tieto’s Effica EPR and HIS. Effica is the market leading information system for care institutions and hospitals in Finland. It is fully based on Microsoft technology. The citizen application uses SOA to integrate with the clinical system.

In the future, Digital Self Care service will be considerably extended. “We expect that many other municipalities will be interested as well”, says Kirjavainen, “and we will also add new features to existing implementations.” One will be to give patients the opportunity to upload data into the system, for example vital parameters or questionnaire data. Another project that is already being tested in pilot installation in cooperation with the Finnish Medical Association is to include decision support tools that can help care providers to interpret medical data in the EPR correctly.

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For more information about Tieto's Healthcare & Welfare solutions, visit our booth #129 at the World of Health IT 2010 in Barcelona.