Inadequate data exchange in healthcare ‘can lead to death’

Inadequate data exchange in healthcare can lead to ‘overtreatment, poor quality of life and even death’. This is what healthcare consultant and former VVD MP Arno Rutte says. Healthcare providers have been encountering digital barriers for some time, making it difficult to share patient data with other healthcare providers. ‘

The current problems in healthcare can be traced back to 2011, when the Senate tackled a proposal for a national patient file due to concerns about patient privacy. According to Rutte, a ‘spaghetti’ has emerged of systems in which healthcare providers store medical information about patients. ‘People have all started building their own systems. A landscape of competition instead of cooperation emerged.’

A change is slowly taking place, the consultant notes. This is partly due to an urgent letter that various health organizations sent to the House of Representatives earlier this year. According to those organizations, the inadequate data exchange would lead to ‘additional risks of avoidable health damage or worse’ for patients.

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The will to collaborate seems to be there again, but the technical barriers to this raise many questions. “The systems do not connect with each other,” Rutte sees. This does not only concern hospitals that experience the problems, general practitioners, nursing homes and mental health care providers also recognize the barriers.

Fax

It is particularly striking that healthcare still uses very old-fashioned systems to share data. For example, the former MP points out that DVDs have only recently been banned from healthcare to exchange data. ‘There is now also a program to ban the fax. It is no longer used anywhere, except in healthcare.’

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The old, cumbersome systems are a thorn in Rutte’s side. ‘It takes a lot of time, even though staff is scarce. It also doesn’t make the work of healthcare employees any more enjoyable.’ Apart from that, there are many risks involved, the consultant emphasizes. For example, patient files are sometimes retyped in order to share the data with other healthcare providers. ‘If you retype it, you could make a typo or record something incorrectly, and then you’re stuck again.’

EU bill

For the final solution, the European Union is mainly being looked at. A European law should make it possible for patient information to be shared between hospitals throughout the EU. ‘If it works, it will be wonderful.’ However, patients do not have to fear that their data will simply be shared with healthcare providers elsewhere in the EU. They still retain control over their data. ‘The proposal states that data may be exchanged as standard, unless you as a patient indicate that this is not allowed.’