Dalibor Stanimirovic and Mirko Vintar
3 – Partly functional( some of the planned component operations are implemented, functional and applied in practice within the health care environment).
4 – Functional( all of the planned component operations are implemented, functional and applied in practice within the health care environment).
Finally, based on the assigned grades, the calculation of the average score of the components’ development level was carried out, facilitating the determination of overall development level of the e‐health project( Figure 2). The nominated components within e‐health project were defined and selected partly on the basis of EU research and guidelines( European Commission 2008, 2009 and 2011) striving to identify the most important factors for development of e‐health projects.
Figure 2: Development of the e‐health components in Slovenia
Components determining the overall development of e‐health in Slovenia achieved the average score of 2.33( std. dev. 0.98) on the scale from 1 to 4( 1 – Conceptual phase, 2 – Development phase, 3 – Partly functional, 4 – Functional). Initial analysis and later evaluation revealed significant deficiencies in the overall up‐to‐date development of e‐health, mostly regarding the development of individual components of e‐health( Figure 2). Especially concerning is the fact that according to some estimates, e‐health development in Slovenia considerably lags behind the EU27 average, as well( European Commission 2008 and 2011, Ministry of Health 2011). Explicit deficiencies related to underdeveloped e‐health components( listed components were graded with scores less than 3 ‐ Partly functional) are summarized and defined below:
• EHR / PHR – Two of the most important components of e‐health are in the development phase and currently do not provide required functionality enabling database connectivity for patients migrating from primary to secondary and tertiary health care level.
• Interoperability framework – Component is in the development phase and currently does not facilitate operationalization of adopted standards and integration of existing IS within health care, laboratory and radiology departments( lab results, Picture Archiving and Communication System – PACS, etc.).
• E‐prescription – Component is in the conceptual phase and the time frame for its construction and subsequent inclusion in the e‐health infrastructure is still indeterminate.
• Telemedicine – Component is in the conceptual phase and although contained in the Slovenian e‐health strategy from 2005, development activities in the telemedicine field have not been specified, let alone launched.
• Performance evaluation of e‐health – Component is in the conceptual phase, since health policy in Slovenia has not established a methodology including appropriate indicators for evaluating the performance of already implemented operational components of e‐health and monitoring of the components in the development process.
• Legal regulation – Component is in the development phase lacking several important regulations for the e‐ health application, especially regarding the transfer of medical data, personal data protection, privacy, interoperability standards, liability and risk issues. Given the existing political debate focused
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