Better is transforming digital health in Finland with its Better Platform
Industry News | Jan. 16, 2023, 8:33 a.m.
Better and Tietoevry, a Finnish information technology services company, are working together on providing over 60 hospitals in Finland with the clinical system, Lifecare, which is based on the Better Platform and the openEHR standard.
The partnership that is revolutionising digital healthcare in Finland started in 2017 and since then, more than 60 hospitals have joined the project. The Better Platform, an open data digital health platform, designed to store, manage, query, retrieve, and exchange structured electronic health records, is a base on top of which Tietoevry has built its clinical system, Lifecare.
Lifecare is a comprehensive clinical system, providing real-time access to patient information and improving care processes. It has replaced an old legacy system with the new, advanced clinical system, which is now serving almost 2 million citizens across both health and social care in Finland and is covering approximately 50% of Finnish Public Health and Social care.
Through the partnership, both Better and Tietoevry are trying to improve the healthcare system with innovative technology and effective solutions. The implementation of Lifecare, which is designed for the health and social care sector, has greatly improved the efficiency and quality of care for patients in Finland. It has also meant a great improvement for overall development processs, as using the Better Studio, a low-code tool, allows for applications to be built rapidly and without too much coding, building forms and assesments in a matter of days or even hours and solving the most urgent problems practically instantly.
The Lifecare clinical system is based on openEHR, a widely-used standard in Europe that has been designed for persistence, to store information in a clear structure and well-modeled framework, and the one that moves the entire landscape from an app-centric architecture to a data-centric one. It has an open architecture, allowing patient-centric information to be stored in a vendor-neutral format that is long-lived, and easily accessible. Important initiatives in the Nordics, the Netherlands, Catalonia, and the UK are basing their health data persistence infrastructure on openEHR.
"We are excited to see the success of our partnership with Tietoevry in Finland," said Tomaž Gornik, CEO of Better, who is also the co-chair of openEHR International. "The adoption of the Lifecare clinical system has had a tremendous impact on the healthcare system in Finland and is bringing better care to social and elderly care sectors. This achievement showcases the ability to bring digital health solutions to the whole country and we are excited to see how they will expand in the future. We are also happy to see that more and more countries are basing their health data persistence infrastructure on openEHR which will lead to the creation of truly innovative solutions that will help institutions stay ahead in a rapidly changing world."
"We started our cooperation with Better in 2017. Through these years, we have jointly built a clinical system, Lifecare, which is based on the Better Platform and the openEHR standard. Until now openEHR has been implemented in production to Lifecare customers covering approximately 50% of Finnish Public Health and Social care. The population coverage of openEHR is currently above 2 million citizens in Finland. We are continuing with the expansion of Lifecare, not only in Finland but also in other countries, and by this further strengthening our partnership with Better in the coming years," said Marko Pyy, Head of Product Management, Lifecare Hospital Information System, Tietoevry Care.
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