Coalition Image availability in the Netherlands is speeding up
At the beginning of this year, the Netherlands Image Availability Coalition started to achieve it of this goal and to reconcile ongoing results. The Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport, the National Health Care Institute, NEN, Taskforce Samen Vooruit, Nictiz and Twiin are working together to arrive at a quality standard, information standard and standards for data exchange. The Dutch Society for Radiology is not a member of the coalition, but is involved in an advisory capacity.
“This development must be placed within the framework of the Electronic Exchange in Healthcare Act”, says Eelke Toonstra of VWS in ICT&health edition 6. “The field needs VWS to take control. This has been complied with by a framework law that data must be exchanged electronically. Under this law, a general Administrative Order will be issued for each exchange of information. Four data exchanges have been prioritized here. In addition, I am the leader for one images and the exchange of medical images and the plan leader.”
Need nationwide image availability
The need for national image availability is already being felt by radiologists, says Mark Kruit, radiologist at the LUMC. “Although we have been producing digital images from the beginning of this century, it remains a hassle to get those elders available. You just want to be able to see without hassle, clearly in your mind, which images have already been taken of a patient in another hospital. Then you can see, for example, that a spot was already visible ten years earlier and is therefore not a cause for concern.”
So, the Dutch Society of Radiology entered in 2018 to describe the functional requirements for national image availability under the banner of Twiin. “That has now happened and so the obtained can get to work,” says Kruit. “With the aim that I have made detailed in my images from images made between my own images can see. This is important not only for us radiologists, but also for other specialists. Not only the PACS but also EPD systems must therefore ensure that this is possible. I am therefore pleased that VWS is now saying that this must be arranged and that legislation is being rigged.”
The suppliers have an important role in developing the software for the leaders to work optimally. But it is up to VWS to smooth out the legal hurdles and manage the process, says Kruit. The development steps that are now being taken make it realistic to achieve the goal of making Toonstra in digital image exchange. “It’s going well,” he says, “we’re making speed. And that is partly due to the fact that we have established this coalition.”
Evaluation January 2022
The planning is to start in January 2022 of the coalition makes sense. But Toonstra can already say that he no longer doubts that. “The added value is clear to me. And this is certainly partly implied in the fact that the coalition is not a decision-making body. If it were, the risk would be very high that we would lose ourselves in a discussion about governance rather than taking concrete steps to achieve our goal.”
The four prioritized data exchanges carried out by the information consultation, arise from the outcome Medication safety, patient-centric, standardized and reuse data. The outcome targets were sent to the Registration at Source, eTransfer, Medication Transfer, and Twiin (image exchange) programs. In the meantime, medMij has been added as the fifth program.
Read the entire article about the Coalition Image Availability in ICT&health 6, which decided on 9 December.
Opening event 2022
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