[Information system in primary health care].

The Croatian Ministry of Health started a health care system computerization project aimed at strengthening the collaboration among health care institutions, expert groups and individual health care providers. A tender for informatic system for Primary Health Care (PHC) general practice, pediatrics and gynecology, a vital prerequisite for project realization, has now been closed. Some important reasons for undertaking the project include rationalization of drug utilization, savings through a reduced use of specialists, consultants and hospitalization, then achievement of better cooperation, work distribution, result linking, data quality improvement (by standardization), and ensuring proper information-based decision making. Keeping non-standardized and thus difficult to process data takes too much time of the PHC team time. Since, however, a vast amount of data are collected on only a few indicators, some important information may remain uncovered. Although decisions made by health authorities should rely on evidence and processed information, the authorities spend most of the time working with raw data from which their decisions ultimately derive. The Informatic Technology (IT) in PHC is expected to enable a different approach. PHC teams should be relieved from the tedious task of data gathering and the authorities enabled to work with the information rather than data. The Informatics Communication Technology (ICT) system consists of three parts: hardware (5000 personal computers for work over the Internet), operative system with basic software (editor, etc.), and PHC software for PHC teams. At the national level (National Public Health Informatics System), a software platform will be built for data collection, analysis and distribution. This data collection will be based on the International Classification of Primary Care (ICPC-2) standard to ensure the utilization of medical records and quality assessment. The system permits bi-directional data exchange between a central database and sources at different levels, across the spectrum from basic PHC teams to local authorities. This will enable data collection control, comparisons with national averages and prompt distribution of information over the Internet. The investment into IT is a strategic imperative having no alternative. A cost/benefit analysis has shown its operation in the PHC system to return the investment in two years. As defined according to the Project priorities (with measurable objectives), the use of new technologies will be introduced by stages.