Whole patient history on a timeline – finally

Atostek has developed a new type of tool for medical professionals which displays patient’s whole medical history on a single timeline. The tool was published at Social & Healthcare ICT Conference, on 23 – 24 May 2017, Helsinki, Finland. The tool’s source code and the interface description enabling easy development of similar applications are available free of charge.

– A doctor is now able to see records of patient’s previous visits to health care units at a glance. The clear view about diagnoses, treatments, and medications helps to get the big picture about patient’s current status and to determine the necessary actions to be taken next. This means faster service with improved quality and lower cost, claims Mr. Mika Torhola, the managing director of Atostek.

Patient’s Timeline is an example of digitalisation: how combining the existing information could benefit health care. The data required for the timeline is already there, stored nationwide in the Kela’s Kanta archive.

– Previously, it would have been difficult to implement a system like this due to the complicated prerequisites to access medical data in Kanta. To solve this problem, Atostek has created a simplified eRA interface service for accessing Kanta, explains Mr. Torhola.

– We have published the simple Kanta interface, thus anybody is able to develop their own innovative Kanta-based services. Patient’s Timeline is just one example of open source services and we hope more will appear in the near future, says Mr. Torhola.

– We created an imaginary patient with frequent visits to private clinics, occupational health care, municipal health care, and special treatment units. There are different kind of health care organisations, however, the clinician needs to get the whole picture at a glance about what has happened since the patient’s last visit, describes the deputy chief physician Ms. Satu Mäkelä at Tampere University Hospital, who has contributed to the development project.

The tool was developed as a proof of concept in the Finnish UNA project which promotes development of nationwide ICT services in social and health care. The goal was to implement a visualisation of patient history on a single timeline across organisational borders.

– The physicians and other medical professionals have longed for this kind of tool, however, it has been a tall order due to the fact that treatment crosses many organisations. In this approach, there is an information service layer which supports system independent data access to modular information systems which can be easily integrated. The information service layer doesn’t replace anything, instead it enables combining information and processes in a new way, describes Mr. Ari-Pekka Paananen, the chief information officer at Kanta-Häme Hospital District.

– Patient’s Timeline is the first actual implementation in the UNA project. Getting the information into a single view across organisations and independently from their information systems proofs the concept of the successful UNA architecture, claims Mr. Paananen.

Additional Information:

Mr. Mika Torhola, Atostek, tel. +358 50 412 3453

Mr. Ari-Pekka Paananen, tietohallintojohtaja, Kanta-Häme Hospital District, tel. +358 40 830 7902

Atostek’s Kanta-service eRA 2.0 interface description download

Parient’s Timeline source code at GitHub

Atostek is the leading Finnish developer of Kanta-oriented applications independent from patient information systems. The number of it’s eRA service users exceeds 2000 and it’s increasing rapidly. The company was founded in 1999 and it’s turnover was 3,9 Million Euros in 2016.