Optimizing healthcare at home

Medvision360 were the first to develop a fully standardized open source EHR platform that can be used to store patient records securely, provide patients and health care professionals with the exact data they need in any given situation, and aggregate data anonymously for research. Since then, they’ve created a range of products based on this technology.

We helped Medvision360 to develop MedPlanning, an application for healthcare planners. It’s designed for countries such as the Netherlands, where patients have a choice of public or private sector healthcare and must manage and co-ordinate the work of a range of different providers in order to get the best care at the lowest cost.

Since government rules governing healthcare provision are so complicated, and each provider works under a separate contract (or sub-contract), planning can be complex and time-consuming – and mistakes are expensive. So it’s usually worth involving a professional, particularly for patients with serious or ongoing conditions.

Previously, healthcare planners did the best they could with their own knowledge and general office software such as Outlook. MedPlanning automates the whole process, automatically identifying the best providers and determining a plan to co-ordinate all the contracts and budgets involved and deliver the right care while minimizing overheads and tax liabilities. The planner can then propose the best possible care plan, which they might otherwise never have found, in a much shorter timeframe.

Previously, invoices relating to each patient’s individual healthcare plan would be entered by hand. Since each plan could involve dozens of invoices every month, all involving complex calculations, transcription errors would inevitably creep in. These mistakes would then have to be painstakingly tracked down among myriad documents.

To avoid discrepancies, MedPlanning uses the same underlying XML data for invoice printing and fiscal reporting. A complex CSS style sheet is used to print the invoice in the required format, and the same data is then passed to an OpenERP accounting system via an API for fiscal reporting. This has completely removed all possibility of human error, saving hours spent finding mistakes.