At first, the “E-health” system is implemented at the Kyiv Military Hospital. The system allows for electronic record keeping of the soldiers’ medical cards. According to Mykhailo Lopatin, the project leader, this system allows the doctors to get all the relevant information in the medical history of the wounded before their hospitalization. It will establish communication between doctors at different institutions and will optimize the treatment process – as a decision on a medical action would require a lot less time from physicians.
“In order to administer any medication, one should know whether the person has an allergy to it,” says Ivan Zviahin, volunteer of the National Resistance Headquarters medical service. “With the new system, a doctor will immediately have access to all the patient’s contraindications and would be able to assign the necessary treatment quickly.”
Currently, the project has connected the Zaporizhia Military Hospital and the Artemivsk Central District Hospital. The Mariupol Emergency Hospital, as well as the Kharkiv and Lviv Military Hospitals will also enter the system soon. In the future, the system will work with every medical institution in the ATO zone. The resource will also be accessed by the Ukrainian Academy of Medical Sciences and the Ministry of Health. By March 2016, the “E-health” system is planned to have 500 organizations as users.
COMMENTARY
Natalia VORONKOVA, Adviser to the Minister of Defense, founder of the NGO “Good Will Volunteer hundred”:
“The ‘E-health’ initiative will help to collect the full information about the soldiers, starting with the frontline and spreading it to all hospitals in which they are treated. Implementing technological innovations is difficult, so we are moving step by step. That way we see the flaws of the system immediately, and we eliminate them as we try to expand. The electronic database is already operational, but there is a small problem that concerns our legislation. By law, doctors are obliged to keep patient information in paper form, so there is an additional work for them – they now need to maintain electronic and paper cards simultaneously. But on the other hand, as the doctors submit the data to the database, they can simply print it out and put their signature.
“The second aspect of today’s work is the evacuation of the wounded. We are testing several systems regarding that, including the GPS-navigation. Our plan is to have the manager who sends ambulances to the frontline able to see the location and condition of every vehicle in real time. If this experiment succeeds, we hope that in a year or even in six months, every ambulance crew will have their personal tablet computer. So that the crew could submit the information to a unified system, and the hospitals would know in advance where the specific soldiers with their specific injuries are delivered.”
