Healthcare Content Management: The big brother of HIS

During the coronavirus crisis digitally transforming medical facilities has become a top political priority. However, for Dr. Daniel Geue, Head of Product Management at VISUS Health IT GmbH, merely introducing an app or updating the Hospital information system (HIS) is not enough. Healthcare content management becomes indispensable at the latest when medical facilities want to share or evaluate a large volume of data. A high-performance tool becomes essential.

VISUS specialises in digital medical archiving. How important is digital archiving in the context of modernising IT in hospitals, which is gathering pace everywhere?

It is very important. Our concept of archiving at VISUS is not just data storage. Rather, data must be stored in a way that permits rapid access, communication and evaluation, without any major effort. Following the example of enterprise content management (ECM), we coined the term healthcare content management (HCM), which other providers have taken over, too. Digital archiving in an environment where data access and communication is essential is how we define HCM. An HCM system of this kind is not an add-on to the HIS, but its big brother really, and in terms of importance at least on a par.

What exactly should a modern, future-proof HCM concept look like? And how specifically do medical facilities benefit?

An HCM system worthy of this definition must fulfil several requirements. A key factor is consistently and comprehensively fulfilling standards, in particular where communication interfaces and data formats are concerned. No one wants to access dozens of systems using individual, proprietary interfaces, and no one needs data formats whose long-term storage capability is in doubt. Curated and structured metadata are important. For a medical facility, they represent the real benefit of an HCM system aiming to be more than long-term digital storage. Only when archived data are enhanced with metadata can they be communicated without problems, and only then can self-teaching algorithms or other AI applications be put to intelligent use. In addition to standards and metadata, facilities need to make use of infrastructural basics. Rapid access, secure audits and fail-safety are indispensable. In our view, anyone unable to offer central data storage and a cloud-compatible archiving concept in addition to local storage cannot compete nowadays.

How can VISUS help customers implement a modern archiving concept?

In JiveX HCM, we have a modular product that offers customers optimum support in every relevant area – from data input, data administration and archiving through to representation, communication and evaluation. Our system receives data in any form, converts them into a standard format as required and automatically enhances them with metadata. VISUS HCM is also extremely fail-safe. Database clusters are structured in such a way as to ensure the system continues to operate even if, for whatever reason, individual elements fail. With regard to the Hospital Future Act I would also like to highlight the communication functions. The JiveX Healthcare Connect product range offers our customers standardised external communications, making individual IT system communications unnecessary. That is particularly important with a view to the electronic patient file (ePA), which every facility will need to access in the future.

Due to the coronavirus, this year’s DMEA will be taking place as an entirely virtual event again. On the topic of digital archiving, what is in store for visitors?

DMEA is a very important trade fair for us. We very much regret that it can only take place online, but naturally we are making the best of it. In particular, we will be holding two partner events, one on how to easily and securely share medical data (9 June 2021, 10.15 – 11 a.m.) and a ’Meet the Experts’ session on healthcare content management (10 June 2021, 10.15 – 11 a.m.), where our VISUS experts will answer questions from all interested users. A 30-minute livestreamed DMEA partner session will focus on the JiveX Healthcare Content Management system and feature a customer of VISUS talking about their experience with JiveX HCM in a corporate environment. That will be a genuine highlight which will demonstrate the capabilities and benefits of the HCM approach.