Mgr. Ing. David Steiner, MBA, PhD., is the Managing Director of Steiner, a Czech software company. The company was founded in 1991 and is engaged in developing medical software for hospital medical facilities. Steiner’s software is used in more than forty countries around the world.
You have been active on the market for over thirty years, and you have the opportunity to keep track of digitisation in the Czech healthcare sector. What is the level of digitisation, and what opportunities can you see?
Several analyses have been produced in recent years describing the state of digitisation. There are subprojects within individual hospitals where European money is invested in local and duplicative projects. There is a lack of central state services and standards. A number of recent projects have been successful, e.g. eRecept (electronic prescription), eNeschopenka (electronic sickness certificate) and vaccination. Other projects, however, are slower in following them.
The state needs one central patient registry linked to the population registry with basic patient information. It is also necessary to create a central registry of medical records — basically, chronic and medical history data, patient’s appearance in medical institutions, and then gradually build it up.
People would certainly welcome a national patient portal, which could include a range of services, such as viewing one’s own medical records, making appointments for health services or assessing the quality of care. But more sophisticated solutions could also be built there, such as a virtual triage that filters out simple cases and directs the patient to further care or personalised prevention.
What projects are you currently working on?
Our current most important project is the implementation of a hospital information system for Masaryk Memorial Cancer Institute (MMCI) in Brno and Bulovka Hospital. In the MMCI, this is a large-scale project that includes not only the clinical system but also laboratories, radiology, pharmacy, digital archive, and hardware supply.
The MMCI is a top medical facility that has high demands on the digitisation of nursing care, the entire workflow of chemotherapy, radiotherapy, and other activities. It uses some progressive practices in the automation of activities, e.g. a nursing diagnosis is made based on a questionnaire survey, from which actions are then generated for the care plan. Its scientific and research activity, which includes specific requirements for the recording of clinical studies and the bank of biological material, is also important.
The TRIMMUS transplant project in collaboration with the University Hospital of Oslo in Norway and follow-up projects in the Netherlands, Portugal and Singapore are signifi cant as well.
Can you give a practical example of a healthcare facility using your software effectively?
We develop specialised information systems for clinical laboratories and transplant immunology. These systems help national hematopoietic cell donor registries and their laboratories in more than 40 countries to build paperless workflows for selecting the most suitable donor globally, i.e. international integration and national digitisation. For example, we provide portal solutions for donors and collaborating hospitals in Finland. Donor selection is performed using predictive algorithms that calculate the probability of achieving the desired laboratory results before they have been ordered. This can save money and especially time, which is critical for the patients and their chance of recovery.
Thank you for the interview.
