Indra leads the first implementation of the Electonic Prescrition in Cantabria

Indra, the premier IT company in Spain and a leading IT multinational in Europe has just finished the implementation of a pilot information system to manage the electronic prescription in Cabezon de la Sal, Cantabria with the involvement of the local health centre and three chemists of the area.

The project is within the Plan Avanza 2’s framework, promoted by the Ministry of Industry and Commerce, and was carried out through the Programa Sanidad en Linea, where the State Secretariat for Telecommunications and Information Society cooperates with Cantabria’s regional Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Health and Social Policy through red.es.

Cabezon de la Sal was chosen as a starting point for the implementation of the e-prescription in Cantabria due to its scattered population and because chemists are centralised in an urban nucleus. With this in mind, the objective is to assess users’ acceptance of both patients and health professionals in order to gradually cover the whole area.

This new contract reaffirms the IT company’s leadership in the implementation of the electronic prescription in Spain with projects in Andalusia, Aragon, Madrid, Murcia and Valencia. Besides this, Indra is also engaged in the development and implementation of the Computerised Prescription System for the Instituto Social de las Fuerzas Armadas (ISFAS) and the Mutualidad General Judicial (MUGEJU) and in Ceuta and Melilla autonomous cities.

The system implemented by the IT company includes different modules. One module integrates the doctor’s prescription which facilitates communication between the doctor and the chemist, as well as the consultation of the patient’s prescription issuing and dispensation of medicines. Another module is dedicated to dispensation and provides the necessary information for economic and stock applications to work properly besides a third module for user and profile management which also updates nomenclator and validates the chemists’ digital signatures.

In addition to this, the system also includes a management module that allows configuring the dispensation module according to the user’s needs (margins and dispensation frequencies, sanitary and stock shortage alerts, interactions, duplicities and substitution of medicines and sanitary products). Finally, a module for billing and data mining has also been set up which will collect information related to dispensations from the electronic prescription system for further statistics analysis.

The main technological complexity of the project lies in the multiple integrations in real time with the Cantabrian health service’s internal systems (users’ database, prescription systems or systems to issue the right of inspection). The electronic prescription system can also be integrated with the application developed by the Pharmaceutical Association of Cantabria.

For security reasons a SSL encryption protocol will be used as well as identification cards with digital certificates for chemists. In compliance with the organic law of personal data protection, the system will keep a record of access.

Improvement in medical care

Indra’s electronic prescription system is expected to enhance the quality of medical care, since users will no longer have to visit the health care to renovate a prescription which also increases availability. This is especially important for chronic patients or those who live far from a health centre.

The system allows health professionals to issue a global prescription only once without need of renewal, follow up the prescription and to incorporate thorough and updated clinical, pharmacological and pharmaeconomic information. Chemists will be able to report incidents in the treatment and to engage in the pharmacotherapeutic followup.

Leadership in health systems

Currently, Indra’s health care management systems provide two thirds of the national population with services; for instance we can highlight avant-garde projects such as the electronic prescription in Andalusia, the first autonomous region to replace the traditional prescription with the sanitary card and Abucasis, a cutting-edge system at national level that collects all the information regarding medical records of the Valencia community.

It is worth mentioning that Indra’s technologies and knowledge applied to health are based on its Salud 2.0 platform which specialises in Telemedicine, digital Imagery, electronic prescription or electronic medical records, among others. This platform is the fruit of cumulative experience in the development of projects for private and public sectors, at both national and international levels, which translates into an opportunity thanks to system interoperability after decentralization in health care.

Indra is the premier Information Technology company in Spain and a leading IT multinational in Europe and Latin America. It is ranked as the second European company in its sector according to stock market capitalisation, and also the second Spanish company with the most investment in R&D. In 2008, revenues reached € 2,380 M, of which a third came from the international market. The company employs more than 29,000 professionals and has clients in more than 90 countries.