Santeon hospitals share blueprint for data availability

"Years of talking about data availability is nice, but you want to achieve something. So you just have to get started with data standardization." So says Erik Bakker, department manager of the Data Expertise Center at Medical Spectrum Twente. Together with the other Santeon hospitals, he has built the Health Intelligence Platform (HIPS). "The next step is the launch of FENIX, a blueprint for data availability in healthcare that does cooperate," says Floortje Diephuis, product owner HIPS at Santeon. At Zorg & ict, they will tell you how that works.

About 15 years ago, Santeon started collecting data structurally, first manually and then automatically through HIPS and the Dataset Generator (DSG). Very quickly came an emphasis on unity of language, comprehensive governance and assurance in the local work processes of the seven Santeon hospitals, explains Floortje Diephuis. "That created trust. That way all seven hospitals knew: we are doing it right," Bakker said.

Zibs and sibs

The data belongs and remains with the hospitals themselves and thus the responsibility for the way of data collection. For the analyses and reports, the Santeon hospitals work together. Floortje Diephuis visualizes this 'fragmented data collection' in a striking image: each piece of information is in a different cupboard, drawer or bucket at each hospital.

"That's where Santeon Information Model needs to be able to talk with it to realize clear analyses. How we do that? To realize unity of language within the collaborating hospitals, we needed more than Nictiz's healthcare information building blocks (zibs). We extended those with Santeon Information Bowstones (sibs)."

Then, to move toward a cohesive infrastructure, with a variety of different capabilities and applications, Santeon developed FENIX: FHIR Enabled Node for Information eXchange.

Push and pull

Completely fragmented collection was not: there was another intermediate step. Together, the seven collaborating hospitals came up with the Dataset Generator (DSG) technology. It is a modular push system that can push data to multiple information standards. Santeon wanted to extend this to all hospital information systems and supplement it with a pull factor so that healthcare professionals and scientists can request data from the source. The non-anonymized data stays in the hospital, anonymized data is shared. FENIX now provides that as well.

Accelerated connecting

The modular approach ("thought of once, applied seven times"), the emphasis on governance and the advanced building blocks make FENIX a blueprint that need not be limited to between hospital walls, Erik Bakker shows. His sheets show a picture of the whole world, but Bakker sees applications primarily in regional care chains.

The timing is perfect for that. At the end of January was the kickoff of a new movement in Twente healthcare: Accelerated Connecting. Erik Bakker: "In it, the two hospitals in the region work closely together with, among others, general practitioners, pharmacies, home care, mental health and elderly care on joint data availability. Similar to the Santeon system, this should make it possible to ask each healthcare organization: what information do you have about this patient? Nictiz has a subsidy to work this out, says Bakker. "But the question is whether we should wait for that. We'd rather get started right away ourselves."