The secretaries for Healthcare Decision Making and Relations and Policies, Regulations and Institutions from the Ministry of Health, Eduardo Bustos Villar and Gabriel Yedli, appeared last week on the panel “The Functionality of the Federal Fiber-Optic Network for Healthcare”, held at the Tecnópolis fair ground, as part of the “Patria Grande Conectada” Latin American Conference on Telecommunications, Culture and Digital Inclusion. Providing information on the Plan Integral de Comunicaciones e Informatización de la Salud (Comprehensive Plan for Healthcare Communications and Computerization or Picis), the representatives stated that the computerization of the healthcare system is a process with “enormous potential” which will make it possible to “improve the quality of administration, reduce costs, provide quality information and encourage appropriate healthcare planning and management for every inhabitant.” The panel’s moderator was the Technical and Academic Secretary for Strategic Planning and Coordination for the Connected Argentina Plan, Emmanuel Jaffrot, and also featured the participation of the IT and Telecommunications Coordinator for the Cuenca Matanza-Riachuelo Authority (Acumar), Esteban Nemes, and the President of the IberoAmerican Telemedicine Foundation, Guillermo Schor-Landman. Jaffrot stated that the objectives of the initiative include the “generation of an electronic health record for every citizen” and achieving better “communication between healthcare programs” in order to provide “much more flexible management, better adapted to real life circumstances.” “Imagine the significance having the information in real time represents for treatment, the potential is enormous,” Yedlin added, noting that “this model for growth has reasserted the role of the State and ensures that healthcare will remain a fundamental public good.” The secretary also described the healthcare initiatives which promote the use of computer systems to computerize the loading and encryption of the data of all beneficiaries such as Plan Nacer (public health insurance for pregnant women and children under six who don’t have social security), the Programa Remediar (free medicine provision for 15 million people via the Primary Healthcare Network), the Argentina Integrated Healthcare System (Siisa) and the National System for Healthcare Supply and Transplants (Sintra), “Under Siisa it is the individual provinces which upload their own data; we have registered more than 19,000 establishments throughout the country, have certified over 523,000 healthcare professionals and are also registering everyone who receives vaccines,” said Yedlin, describing the technology as a “social tool and asset.” Bustos Villar said: “The digitalization and management of healthcare information provided by the healthcare system will improve the quality of administration, reduce costs, provide quality information and encourage appropriate healthcare planning and management for every inhabitant,” adding that “We are also aiming at establishing a digital management system for healthcare information which will allow us to nominally identify beneficiaries,” emphasizing that to do this “it will be necessary to modify current regulations which establish that medical prescriptions and recommendations must be handwritten.”
