Initiate signs agreement with SQLI Groupe
- 18 June 2007
Initiate Systems, the supplier of patient data management and enterprise master patient index solutions, has announced a new strategic agreement with French healthcare identity management specialists SQLI Groupe.
SQLI Groupe is one of the main suppliers in the French market who have been helping with the national and regional electronic health records (EHR) strategies. The agreement will enable them to offer the Initiate Identity Hub software as part of their portfolio
Initiate Identity Hub software helps healthcare workers with patient data integration, providing a enterprise master person index (EMPI). It gives hospitals a complete, real-time view for each patient on demand.
Initiate’s vice president for business development in Europe, Tony Bowden, told E-Health Europe: “The principle aspect around this strategic agreement is making SQLI Groupe the value added reseller for the Identity Hub software in France. The system is designed specifically to provide a complete healthcare through one single patient record.”
SQLI have been working on the French national IdeoPass initiative, a collaborative development on the promotion of software components in free licence intended for the medical sector.
Under the deal with Initiate, SQLI will now be able to offer enhanced functionality and a more future-proof solution to meet the fast growing needs for accurate, scalable and robust patient identification and interoperability.
Bowden told EHE: “By using Identity Hub, the French will be able to achieve both national and regional initiatives through pulling together a single EHR from all the data in non-integrated systems. The first thing they will have to get right is a unique identity for each patient and from there they will be able to create a single EMPI for every patient they see.
The Initiate VP added: “Not only will it help with French initiatives, but it will also help to bring France into the standards laid out in the European Commission eHealth strategy. Fast and accurate retrieval of patient data is fundamental. With Identity Hub, all records can be analysed and merged to create a single EMPI relatively easily."
He told EHE that the ability to easily identify patients would also provide a foundation for the development of trans-national EHR’s, able to operate across different countries borders, a key objective of the Commission’s eHealth sctrategy.
SQLI’s director of programs in eHealth, Omar Mrani, said: “Building a unique patient identifier is a key requirement for the secure exchange of medical data between health professionals. The Initiate technology is extremely flexible and allows us to accurately link disparate and fragmented records to create a single comprehensible patient record, using any combination of demographic data, individual systems and local identifiers. “
SQLI will initially add Identity Hub to add to its existing Ideo Sante healthcare systems range.
“Our initial objective is to complete our range of Ideo Sante solutions by offering a complete and highly effective solution for identity management for the health sector and in time to offer this to other sectors, such as telecommunications, financial services and the public sector.”
Initiate say that as the European Commission guidelines do not yet provide a common standard for patient identification it is essential that member states invest in EMPI solutions to ensure single electronic health records can be shared across borders.
“The healthcare industry brings its own distinct set of challenges with data security, privacy, data quality and interoperability as very high priorities. We recognise and applaud the pioneering emphasis within France on giving the patient the ability to control their own healthcare information. This puts effective, modern, automated identity management at the very centre of ICT systems for healthcare,” Bowden said.
Links
SQLI Groupe (French language)
IdeoPass initiative (French language)
European Commission eHealth strategy
