The National Health Insurance Administration (NHIA) yesterday unveiled a cloud-based file-sharing platform for diagnostic images to be shared among hospitals, which is expected to cut the insurance system’s expenses by NT$2 billion (US$67.66 million) annually.
The platform, launched on Jan. 1, allows large hospitals to upload computed tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans, the agency said, adding that the images can be retrieved by local hospitals in case of follow-up consultations.
At a news conference to introduce the platform yesterday, Premier William Lai (賴清德) said it could help hospitals provide better medical services, helping larger medical centers avoid being swamped with patients, which would also improve hospital classification and patient referral systems.
Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中) said that the platform “not only improves quality, efficiency and safety, but also avoids repeated examinations that waste society’s resources.”
NHIA Director-General Lee Po-chang (李伯璋) said that through the new platform, patients would not need to spend NT$200 to NT$600 to have their CT, MRI, ultrasound, colonoscopy or esophagogastroduodenoscopy images saved to a CD-ROM or to print out their blood test results to transfer their medical records to another facility.
A doctor testing the system retrieved images within seconds on a computer, Lee said, adding that it can sometimes take several minutes to retrieve images from a CD-ROM or from another hospital’s database, because some facilities use different document formats.
The total annual budget allocated for the National Health Insurance system this year is about NT$660 billion, he said, adding that with projected annual increases of 5 percent, it is likely that monthly insurance premiums would need to be increased in 2021.
After analyzing a large pool of big data over the past few years, the agency decided to cut down on unnecessary repeated examinations and medication, Lee said.
In 2013, it launched the PharmaCloud system, which allows doctors at contracted medical facilities to search for patients’ medication records for the previous three months, he said.
A cloud-based file-sharing platform for information on 11 types of examinations and surgeries over the previous few months was launched in 2015, he added.
Since the imaging platform was launched about half a month ago, 71 percent of contracted hospitals have already uploaded examination results and 64 percent have retrieved files, with an average of 10 to 25 seconds to download a CT or MRI scan image, Lee said.
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