Better digital health platform as a base in the Infobanco project

Better, together with NTT Data, VeraTech and RHEA, has implemented its digital health platform and openEHR technology to launch the Infobanco project. This initiative, a pioneer in the use of openEHR in Spain, will enable the unification of healthcare data from the Madrid hospital network, starting with the Hospital Universitario 12 de Octubre.

Jovan Pavićević, International Markets Director at Better, explained that "currently in Spain, patients' medical records are not interconnected between the different autonomous communities or between provinces or health areas. And sometimes not even between a hospital and a health centre in the same locality". Therefore, the fact that healthcare professionals cannot access medical records easily and efficiently represents a real problem for patients' health, as consultations and procedures are duplicated, which represents a waste of resources.

To overcome this obstacle, a new paradigm of healthcare data was used, based on openEHR, a standard consisting of open specifications, clinical models, and software to create solutions for both information and healthcare mechanisms.

To create Infobanco, Better has contributed to the project its openEHR technology, Better Platform, which has already been successfully implemented in Slovenia and Malta at the national level, in the UK (OneLondon) and Germany (HighMed consortium) at the regional level, and in hospitals such as The Christie NHS Foundation Trust (Manchester, UK) and IRCCS Burlo Garofolo (Trieste, Italy). The idea of building a health data network with openEHR is spreading to other regions such as Catalonia, that recently closed the bidding process to build its own architecture.

"For a healthcare region to have data in openEHR format means an evolution in current and future technological systems, which will allow for improved value-based healthcare, biomedical research, and other secondary uses," explains Pavićević. "Added to this is the fact that the information is stored in a data lake - a standardised repository that allows all clinical information to be aggregated in one place - which allows the information to be centralised and shared," he added.

The Community of Madrid, through the Regional Ministry of Health, has already begun the implementation of Infobanco at the Hospital Universitario 12 de Octubre, with the aim of developing a regional health data network architecture in the Madrid hospital network. This new pioneering system in Spain, which is expected to be implemented in June 2023, represents an investment of 1.97 million euros financed under Thematic Objective 1 of the European Regional Development Fund for the strengthening of research, technological development and innovation.

Infobanco has been developed by Better, together with VeraTech and RHEA, and coordinated by NTT DATA. Pavićević explained: "We started working in Spain and with NTT DATA last year and we are proud to see Infobanco and Hospital 12 de Octubre as our first success in the Spanish market. They are known for being an innovation-driven hospital, which is very much aligned with our own culture, and selecting Better Platform is a recognition of that." 

In this context, Pavićević explained that all healthcare markets are moving in a similar direction, developing regional architectures and standardised data repositories based on open data models, both for research and secondary use of data, as well as for care and care coordination. "We hope that Infobanco will be an example project and that other hospitals and regions in Spain will follow this path of standardisation and open data to provide patient-centred care and build innovative solutions to improve the efficiency and management of the healthcare system," said Pavićević.