{"id":155250,"date":"2018-06-25T11:03:41","date_gmt":"2018-06-25T08:03:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.tehnopol.ee\/nortal-taking-estonias-digital-healthcare-success-to-the-global-market-2\/"},"modified":"2024-03-13T11:11:39","modified_gmt":"2024-03-13T09:11:39","slug":"nortal-taking-estonias-digital-healthcare-success-to-the-global-market-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tehnopol.ee\/en\/nortal-taking-estonias-digital-healthcare-success-to-the-global-market-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Nortal: taking Estonia\u2019s digital healthcare success to the global market"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of the giants of Estonia\u2019s tech scene,\u00a0Nortal<\/a>\u00a0has been a key player in the development of the country\u2019s\u00a0digital\u00a0healthcare ecosystem for the last 15 years. The company is now leveraging this experience abroad, implementing large-scale projects in Europe and the Middle East.<\/p>\n

Sometimes size truly can be an advantage. When it comes to delivering complex systems for running hospitals or medical records databases for entire countries, it helps to have a large pool of in-house talent and experience to draw upon. In\u00a0Nortal\u2019s\u00a0case, the size factor isn\u2019t only about numbers of experts. It\u2019s about the broad range of areas they cover.<\/p>\n

\u201cNortal\u2019s\u00a0edge is that we\u2019re much more than just a healthcare tech company. It\u2019s even fair to say that we\u2019re much more than a tech company,\u201d explains\u202fTaavi\u00a0Einaste, the group\u2019s\u00a0head of\u00a0digital\u00a0healthcare. While\u00a0Nortal\u00a0does indeed have a strong track record in the connected healthcare field, it also has solid experience in several other areas, from eGovernment and optimizing heavy industry to ease of doing business, providing strategy and change management services as well as technological solutions.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat gives us an extremely wide portfolio that\u00a0includes\u00a0data-exchange standards, electronic ID\u00a0expertise, big data analytics, data protection \u2013 the fundamentals that modern medical systems are built on,\u201d said\u00a0Einaste. \u201cWe even have experts in GDPR compliance, for example, so we can integrate that feature into our designs from the beginning.\u201d<\/p>\n

This breadth of knowledge has continued to prove useful ever since\u00a0Nortal\u2019s\u00a0first foray into the healthcare field in 2003. It was then that\u00a0Nortal\u00a0began building a comprehensive, web-based\u00a0hospital\u00a0information\u00a0system for Tartu University Hospital, an organization that remains a\u00a0Nortal\u00a0client to this day.<\/p>\n

More recently,\u00a0Nortal\u00a0created a centralized national health record (NHR) system for Lithuania<\/a>. The system serves as the foundation for the country\u2019s entire healthcare ecosystem and allowed the later addition of an electronic prescription element that has gained widespread popularity.<\/p>\n

In the United Arab Emirates,\u00a0Nortal\u00a0is partnering with the Abu Dhabi-based IT company\u00a0inHealth\u00a0to provide expertise and solutions in the area of electronic health records, electronic prescription and healthcare analytics.<\/p>\n

Electronic ID and other handy tools<\/h3>\n

\u201cOur experience has shown us that every country, and every hospital, has its own way of doing things, which is why recreating systems in new environments is notoriously tricky,\u201d\u00a0Einaste\u00a0notes. \u201cThat said, there are certain key components that need to be in place to make electronic healthcare systems run seamlessly.\u201d
\nChief among those, he says, is\u00a0a\u00a0secure, easy-to-use digital identity<\/a> \u2013 an area in which\u00a0Nortal\u00a0excels.<\/p>\n

\u201cOften the reason these systems stumble and fail to deliver is a faulty set-up for managing users\u2019 digital identities and permissions,\u201d\u00a0Einaste\u00a0explained. \u201cThe lack of a reliable and flexible identity in the digital environment slows down the introduction of interactive solutions and services, and even limits access within healthcare organizations.\u201d<\/p>\n

Systems created by\u00a0Nortal\u00a0not only overcome this roadblock but do so with maximum simplicity at the user end, typically incorporating the latest in mobile-ID and smart-ID authentication. This way, a patient can easily assign access rights to a specialist, for example, and allow doctors to share information<\/a> that\u2019s vital to making the best treatment decisions.<\/p>\n

Other areas of\u00a0Nortal\u2019s\u00a0larger portfolio that come in extremely handy in the digital healthcare field are big data analytics \u2013 the kind that can be used to track health trends and treatment effectiveness \u2013 and the prosaic but critical realm of data exchange platforms.<\/p>\n

Lately, compliance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)\u202fhas become a major topic of concern in healthcare. The EU\u2019s new data protection requirements reach far beyond patient data, touching on everything from communications to human resources.\u00a0Nortal\u2019s\u00a0experience with GDPR solutions runs deep \u2013 the company has implemented top-to-bottom compliance programs for large corporations and even developed its own data discovery tool for handling data mapping. Applying its GDPR\u00a0expertise\u00a0from the business world at large,\u00a0Nortal\u00a0is able to design its digital healthcare systems with privacy at\u00a0its\u00a0core.<\/p>\n

The patient-centric approach<\/h3>\n

As beneficial\u00a0as\u00a0digital healthcare systems are for providers,\u00a0Einaste\u00a0points out that ultimately it\u2019s the patients who matter most in the equation. For this reason, putting the patients\u2019 needs first is fundamental to the systems designed by\u00a0Nortal.
\n\u201cIt sounds like a platitude, but it\u2019s hard to overstate how much this \u2018patient-centric\u2019 orientation boosts the level of real impact these systems have on health outcomes,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cBefore we built the NHR system in Lithuania, health records there were mostly stashed away in individual hospitals and clinics and often kept on paper. If you had a medical issue when you happened to be in another city, the doctors treating you would have a hard time getting your information, which could impede treatment,\u201d said\u00a0Einaste. \u201cEven more frustrating, patients had to jump through hoops to get access to their own medical records.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now the situation couldn\u2019t be more different. Not only can vital medical records be instantly retrieved and securely shared among health professionals, patients themselves have full access and control over who views those records.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur systems let patients use their mobile phones to grant doctors access to records on-the-fly, which is important when time is a factor. This is another example of maximizing ease of use for the patient,\u201d\u00a0Einaste\u00a0said.<\/p>\n

He notes that, on a more global scale, giving patients ownership of their records through NHR or EMR systems could mark the beginning of a larger shift in the relationship between doctor and patient, leading patients to take a far more active role in their own health maintenance and treatment.<\/p>\n

This increased level of patient involvement may be further\u00a0increased\u00a0by the growing popularity of connected wearable tech, a trend that\u00a0Nortal\u00a0is watching closely. From off-the-shelf activity trackers to specialized telemedicine monitors, these can feed data directly into existing electronic medical records to generate a more holistic picture of a patient\u2019s health.<\/p>\n

Nortal\u00a0developed the data-exchange standard for connecting wearables to the NHR in Estonia. Further work will have to be done before wearables actually become a standard part of the nation\u2019s health data landscape, but the foundation has been established.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a perfect example of how we\u2019re constantly looking ahead, designing not just for what\u2019s available now, but also for what\u2019s heading our direction,\u201d\u00a0Einaste\u00a0said. \u201cThis is how\u00a0Nortal\u00a0is contributing to healthcare.\u201d<\/p>\n

The blockchain and healthcare<\/h3>\n

In 2016, the Estonian government was looking for new ways to secure the health records of its 1.3 million residents. It turned to blockchain\u00a0technology.<\/p>\n

The distributed ledger technology has proved its potential in applications where data integrity is critical. For this reason, the Estonian E-Health Foundation made\u00a0the\u00a0blockchain central to a development project aimed<\/a> at safeguarding patient records.<\/p>\n

Crucially, it\u2019s not the health records themselves that are\u00a0blockchained\u00a0but the log files that record access or change to those records. The blockchain creates an immutable audit trail that can be monitored, ensuring that life-critical data hasn\u2019t been improperly altered.<\/p>\n

The project is still a work in progress, but other nations that use electronic health records could soon follow suit.\u00a0Nortal\u00a0is looking into practical ways to use this Estonian experience in other innovative and cutting edge markets.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of the giants of Estonia\u2019s tech scene,\u00a0Nortal\u00a0has been a key player in the development of the country\u2019s\u00a0digital\u00a0healthcare ecosystem for the last 15 years. The company is now leveraging this experience abroad, implementing large-scale projects in Europe and the Middle East. Sometimes size truly can be an advantage. When it comes to delivering complex systems […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":155251,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"_s2mail":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-155250","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-success-story"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tehnopol.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155250","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tehnopol.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tehnopol.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tehnopol.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tehnopol.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=155250"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.tehnopol.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155250\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":155436,"href":"https:\/\/www.tehnopol.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155250\/revisions\/155436"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tehnopol.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/155251"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tehnopol.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=155250"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tehnopol.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=155250"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tehnopol.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=155250"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}