GECAMed, first Luxembourgish software to obtain IHE conformity

GECAMed, the medical office management software, developed by the Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology (LIST) and widely used by Luxembourgish healthcare professionals, has successfully passed IHE profile conformance testing. The interoperability of GECAMed with other solutions available for professionals in the healthcare sector is therefore clearly demonstrated, a first for a Luxembourgish product and moreover for an open source solution.

At the end of April 2015, researchers from the Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology (LIST) participated in the IHE-Europe Connectathon, an annual connectivity test marathon organised in Luxembourg by IHE-Europe in partnership with the national eSanté Agency. IHE-Europe is the European section of Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise (IHE), an international initiative bringing together professionals from the healthcare and industry sectors, including LIST, to improve information exchange between software systems in this field. The IHE initiative defines integration profiles in order to achieve a high interoperability rate between the systems available to healthcare professionals. The validity of their implementation is tested every year in the context of the Connectathon, where industry professionals meet and connect their applications by using the IHE profiles for designing virtual hospital information systems within a variety of fields, including radiology, cardiology, patient-devices, IT infrastructure, etc.

For the latter, LIST submitted its GECAMed medical office management software for an intensive week of conformance testing, which it successfully passed. GECAMed has thus become not only the first system in Luxembourg to be certified but also the first open-source medical office management system to pass this test with flying colours. This event marks real recognition for the software, since the proven IHE conformity certifies that GECAMed meets all of the strict interoperability criteria regarding security and data sharing at a high international standard.

GECAMed, Towards its integration in the national eHealth platform

GECAMed is a secure open source platform developed by LIST researchers in partnership with doctors in order to manage and use medical data. First launched in 2005 with the support of the Ministry of Health, it has since been constantly adapted and improved in order to meet the needs of professionals in the healthcare sector.

Researchers are currently working towards its technical integration into the national eHealth platform as part of the GECAMed eSanté project co-funded by the eHealth Agency and IDO IN. They therefore designed a new version which integrates patient data from shared medical records (Dossier de Soins Partagé - DSP) with GECAMed data in a user-friendly and transparent way, while complying with the data security and protection guidelines established by the eHealth Agency. Thanks to developments achieved within this project, healthcare professionals will no longer be forced to use the web interface of the eHealth platform. They will have direct access to all documents from their own patient record into which they will also be able to directly integrate documents from the DSP. Local documents and documents from the eHealth platform will therefore be able to be managed very quickly and easily with GECAMed.

>> To learn more about GECAMed, visit www.gecamed.lu