IRIS Partner: DMI
The University Hospital in Aachen (Universitätsklinikum Aachen) is one of the largest hospitals in Europe. They chose to digitize patient records in order to gain efficiency within the hospital.
A patient file contains all the information which is relevant to the patient, including their medical history, referral letters, examination reports, ultrasound reports, and any findings from the lab.
At the University Hospital in Aachen, they process around 5 million pages per year. That’s around 50,000 inpatients and 100,000 outpatients annually. They have set up an office in the university hospital, where the files are registered, digitized and archived. This happens with IRISXtract™, a classification technology used for automatic indexing. After they are scanned, all documents are indexed, a document type or name is assigned to each individual document. Then these images and index data are transferred to the archive via the DMI interface as a digital patient file.
From an administration perspective, the major advantage lies in the fact that the patient files no longer need to be physically carried around. The information is fully digitized and can be accessed from anywhere in the hospital.
From the doctor’s perspective, the reduced time spent searching is one of the main benefits of digital patient records. The quicker availability of patient information is a huge step forward. This complete and rapid access to patient information in terms of both their histories and the current information is a real benefit.
In terms of medical controlling, we are planning much closer cooperation with the medical services based on digital files.
From a controlling perspective, the introduction of digital document archiving means a direct reduction of the costs of the paper archive.
From an IT perspective, the introduction of the digital archiving system represents a consolidation of the different document archiving systems within the hospital to one unified document archiving system across the entire site.
From the administration perspective, the major advantage lies in the fact that the patient files no longer need to be physically carried around and the information is fully digitized and can be accessed from any part of the hospital. From the doctor’s perspective, the reduced time spent searching is one of the main benefits of digital patient files and the quicker availability of patient information is a huge step forward.
Bruno Stankowski, IT Systems, Universitätsklinikum Aachen
