The Catalan Health Service (CatSalut) covers a population of roughly 8 million people, oversees Catalonia's public health benefits system, and integrates into the National Health System of Spain. With a desire to build a patient and data-centric longitudinal electronic health record and a vision of providing integrated care coordination, as a first step, Catalonia will establish a vendor-neutral health data platform and a medication management system available to over 60 hospitals.
Together with T-systems, a world-renowned ICT and digital service provider, Better will provide its electronic prescribing and medication administration solution Better Meds. Built on top of the Better Platform and based on openEHR, Better Meds allows hospitals and healthcare professionals to have an integrated therapeutic and clinical vision centred on the patient, minimising the risk of medication-related safety issues, avoiding redundant information entries, and allowing the professionals easy access to data, all leading to reducing the administrative burden of the staff.
The objective of a standardised medication management solution for Catalonia is to improve the experience of healthcare professionals in all areas with the effective use of technology. Better Meds medication management will be progressively installed in most Catalan public hospitals, starting with the first two hospitals, Hospital del Mar and Consorci Hospitalari de Vic.
Roko Malkoč, Better Meds Business Unit Director, said, "Many regions and countries lack patient-centred care and suffer from fragmented clinical data, which slows innovation. We firmly believe that Better Meds can consolidate medication management data into a unified view, reducing the cognitive burden of reconciling patient treatment. We are thrilled to collaborate with T-Systems, CatSalut, and hospitals in Catalonia as we work towards our global vision of a world without medication errors."
“This goes beyond the product. CatSalut will not only get the new medication management solution but also the chance to connect with a diverse community of Better Meds users from around the world, fostering a strong and vibrant network of healthcare professionals benefiting from the solution. Moreover, we are quite happy to get the opportunity to further enhance our product by adapting it and learning from a new market," said Božidarka Radović, Better Meds Product Lead.
"This project will be instrumental in advancing towards integrated therapeutics and truly patient-centred care through a semantic interoperable, modular solution," commented Dr Caridad Pontes García, Director of Pharmaceuticals at CatSalut. Dr Jordi Piera Jiménez, Director of the Digital Health Strategy Office at CatSalut, added that "by providing a common health data specification, based on openEHR, managing electronic health records and other healthcare data will be much easier and more structured. The whole Catalonia will benefit from the integrated and interoperable electronic prescribing and medicines administration solution, and we are very eager to see this system spread even further."
The Catalan Health Service (CatSalut) oversees the public health benefits system in the Autonomous Community of Catalonia. The mission of CatSalut is to guarantee health care with public, comprehensive and quality coverage for all citizens of Catalonia, through an adequate adaptation of the offer to the needs of the population.