Nowadays a serious development can be experienced in the area of medical
informatics. Lately, as a result of that a significant competition has emerged between
companies that develop and produce different medical solutions. In order to help the
habilitators to be able to keep up with these tendencies, the medical service providers
have been preparing electronic reports for years now. During the past few years it has
become possible to even forward these reports electronically.
These reports supply data about the provided services, based on which the amount of
money will be determined that the habilitators need to give. That is the reason why
report preparation has become such an important area in the development of hospital
information systems: it is the key to the financial survival of an institute.
Realizing this, though, is not nearly as trivial as it may seem to be – these reports
have to be prepared in a way that they are in line with relevant laws and regulations, let
alone the hard task of minimizing the number of mistakes in the reports (which could
cause a delay in financing that would just further complicate the situation of health care
providers).
I prepared my dissertation at T-Sytems Hungary Ltd., successor of ISH Informatics
Ltd., which is the market leader in the area of medical informatics in this country.
Additionally, its products are used in the hospitals of six other countries. Besides
developing and supporting the so-called MedSolution and e-MedSolution systems, the
company now began to develop its third-generation, modular hospital information
system. My job was to prepare a development plan for a Reporting Module which could
be released as a separate product in the future.
During this work I have become familiar with the different medical laws and
regulations concerning medical financing as well as the reporting of different health
care services. First I reviewed the necessity of the preparation of a Reporting Module,
then I examined the solutions of the currently existing systems. Finally I prepared the
plan of the Module’s data structure. At the end of my paper I went into details about the
developmental opportunities as well and I also tried to estimate the costs of the
preparation of a separate Reporting Module.