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Medical
informatics.
The
long way of general medicine First they called it electronic brain,
later they become aware that the brain was always that of man and the
electronic was only the mean, the Hardware, the scrap metal.
To
make it run it was required man intelligence that must arrange the operative
software. The logic conclusion is only one: the goodness of informatics
programs is related to what man thinks and it is written in the software.
Professional physicians have always looked at all that rather suspiciously
since they think it may represent an interface in their professional
service and they did not adopted immediately the great potentiality
of the new system.
Neither
the public health, along with all its national, regional and local articulations,
wanted o knew how to ease the introduction of informatics into general
medicine, skimping financial investments that could have given a remarkable
development to health. Today, finally, it seems that there's the premises
to intervene in order to develop the general medicine informatics. Starting
from physicians:
- While in far 1984 when first pilot experiments started off, they did
not find breeding ground since it lacked still an informatics mindedness
and general medicine physicians that worked with computers were negligible,
today the breeding ground over which developing new intervention strategies
is different at all since already the thirty per cent physicians work
in their practice with informatics systems. Examining the polyspecialistic
structures: - in 1984 they used still pen and huge paper supports and
archives, while today they are all fully computerized and they run with
personnel that has set apart the several prejudices against the work
at the computer. Pharmacies:
-
in 1984, at the sight of the first prescriptions issued with computer,
pharmacists sent back customers by assuming that they were not hand
written and that did not have an ink stamp but impressed directly on
the prescription. Today it must be acknowledged that pharmacies work
with advanced informatics systems. Modem connections: - in 1984 connections
were by the means of a Sip's services by equipment supplied by the telephone
company and dedicated line, nowadays connections are by the net or directly
on internet.
The
Lombardy Region has started since more than a year a study for the realization
of a first medical health global automation experiment for an entire
province. The selected Province is that of Lecco, since it is featured
by the dimensions and internal structures that fit the starting of a
project involving all general medicine physicians, pharmacies, public
structures and the new and unique great hospital of the Province. The
system is studied by an Informatics Corporation established ad hoc and
that has already arranged a health managing software concerning the
applicative aspects basing on a Smart card, and as regards to the program
for the general medicine physicians, the corporation is arranging a
system that employs the several software packages already used by physicians
in work. All specifications have been already arranged to start off
the pilot experiment, first with 8 physicians in Lecco that will use
two programs (Koiné and Medicus) - the whole pharmacies in the Province
- 10.000 assisted citizens by 8 physicians equipped with a miniprocessor
where are already introduced their personal and health data.
With the Smart card the assisted may access physicians, pharmacies and
polyspecialistic structures and may receive prescriptions directly on
the Smart card or, at the beginning, on the prescription. Through a
Web site it will be possible to access also the Unique Booking Service,
both from the physician's practice and pharmacies and also from the
polyspecialsitic structures.
The
spread of the medical informatics is the starting phase for the new
way physicians will work. He'll have on disposal new sites that meanwhile
will be developed and that will allow them to broad his acknowledgments.
“Sanitade.com” the new portal about which Leadership 7/2000 gave the
news, will allow physicians connecting to the most important world research
centres, to get in real time scientific information, updated on line,
not only about researches, but also about bank, insurance, fiscal and
social-security advise.
The
plan has been already presented in Rome at the Academics World Meeting
held during the Mass Communication Congress within the Jubilee 2000,
rising enthusiastic consents. So the new millennium starts with a new
hope for the general medicine and arranging a new working tool allowing
him to bypass several bureaucratic knots.
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