On the 3rd and 4th of September Tegucigalpa became the venue for the First Central American Health IT Summit organized by the Honduran Institute of Social Security (IHSS). With the objective of debating how best to optimize the use of ICTs in the health sector, the summit focused on the analysis of trends, achievements and challenges in maintaining and improving the health services of Latin and Central America.
Under the slogan “Using ICTs to improve the efficiency and quality of care”, the Summit addressed issues such as: regulations and standards in Health ICTs, interoperability, integrated hospital management, electronic health records, electronic prescriptions with structured pharmacological databases and certification from the Joint Commission International to ensure quality.
The IHSS emphasized the importance of sharing the experience of unifying financial administration with hospital administration to avoid the creation of obstacles in the service. In fact, the Director of the Institute, Mario Zelaya, said that this summit places Honduras at the vanguard of Social Security in Central America.
In this regard, one of the most notable attractions at the event was the digital hospital project that attendees were given the opportunity to watch live. During the demonstration, CSC’s electronic health record – which integrates solutions from Auren, Vademecum International, Systelab and Cewtec – showed itself to be an integrated patient focused system.
The circuit began with identification of the patient with a biometric system. Then their information was transferred through different levels of care using clinical documentation sharing protocols – as were the results of the laboratory, imaging diagnostic, surgery and UCI department services. Finally the circuit ended in the business intelligence department, which presented an administration and decision making support control panel and an analytical and reporting national statistics module.
In addition to national and international speakers, the event also featured leaders from the sector from Argentina, Chile, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico, Panama and the Dominican Republic, among others.
The First Central American Health IT Summit concluded with an exchange of experiences, successful case studies, networking, debates on fully integrated healthcare models using ICTs, analysis of the development of the basic infrastructure for a healthcare institution, challenges for achieving efficiency and efficacy in health management processes, expectations of changes in patient care with the digitalization of the social security system and future challenges in e-Health.
