Development of eHealth at a national level – comparative aspects and mapping of general success factors

Abstract

Implementation of eHealth is one of the key long-term goals of the Slovenian public sector. The main objective of eHealth is the construction of a comprehensive health information system (IS) and the connection of a widespread network of stakeholders within the healthcare sector. The article presents a review of the eHealth project in Slovenia and provides a comparative analysis of eHealth development in Slovenia, Austria and Denmark. Focusing on the situation in Slovenia, the article identifies the main deficiencies in the current state of eHealth implementation, maps a set of general success factors in the field and suggests guidelines for the effective development and implementation of eHealth projects.

A Framework for Information and Communication Technology Induced Transformation of the Healthcare Business Model in Slovenia

“…As in many southeastern European countries, the Slovenian healthcare system has been facing serious structural and financial challenges in the last two and a half decades (Ministry of Health, 2008;Pammolli, Riccaboni, & Magazzini, 2012;Stanimirovic & Vintar, 2014). It should be noted that the first wave of reforms in the Slovenian healthcare system conducted in early 1990s can be deemed relatively successful, taking into account the ongoing tectonic political shifts and transitional socio-economic conditions (Albreht et al, 2009).…”

Modelling the Health Information System in Slovenia — Operative, Construction and Implementation Aspects

“…Building a comprehensive HIS requires the inclusion of a widespread network of stakeholders and the harmonization of many information subsystems at different levels of healthcare [5]. Informatization of the Slovenian healthcare system should provide opportunities for high quality and professional work with patients and long-term development, whereas relevant and credible economic, administrative and clinical data provided by the HIS should facilitate better quality planning, control and management of healthcare organizations and the healthcare system in general [30,42]. [3,4], all activities in the field are aimed at realizing the eHealth project.…”

“…Notwithstanding the potential of HISs, in practice, the collection, compilation, analysis, and reporting of health data are riddled with major problems [5,26,27]. Furthermore, the data received are often not helpful for healthcare management decision-making because they are incomplete, untimely, and unrelated to the priority tasks of healthcare professionals [28][29][30].…”

“…The majority of such systems have been developed within individual healthcare organizations and are designed specifically to meet their own needs, while they are not adequately interoperable and do not provide reliable, relevant, and timely information [30,42]. The already initiated national project of healthcare system informatization from 2005, named eHealth, is supposed to result in a wide-ranging HIS, which should be able to integrate all fragmented information systems (ISs) into a functional mechanism and offer a complete solution benefitting all interested parties [3,43].…”

“…Other determinants are also involved, such as: 1) organizational and environmental determinants that relate to the information culture within the country context [31,32], the structure of HIS [33,34], the roles and responsibilities of the different actors and the resources available for HIS [30,35]; and 2) the behavioural determinants such as knowledge and skills, attitudes, values, and motivations of those involved in the production, collection, collation, analysis, and dissemination of information [36]. For successful implementation and exploitation of HIS, certain prerequisites need to be in place [37]:…”