Over the last couple of decades, IT communication has become an integral part of the Danish healthcare sector. Data is stored digitally and the swift communication of critical information has become a vital part of the cooperation between all groups in the health sector. It is impossible to imagine daily life without it.
A key challenge in the digital transformation of the healthcare sector has always been the massive amount of data duplication across local systems, leaving both patients and doctors with incomplete and outdated information of the patients current treatment plans.
In 2007, the Danish Health Data Authority set out to establish a nationwide Shared Medication Record, containing up-to-date information on every citizen in Denmark and shared across all local systems in the healthcare sector.
Trifork was selected as vendor and has been part of building, tuning, expanding and driving the system since the beginning. With the shared involvement of many different stakeholders, including the Ministry of Health, the Danish Health Authority and local governments, Trifork, together with the Danish Health Data Authority, developed the Shared Medication Record.
The fundamental requirement for the Shared Medication Record is that all relevant patient information must be readily available when needed. It must be communicated immediately, without errors, and with a high level of data security that ensures the confidentiality of personal data.
The widespread solution is aimed to not only benefit Danish citizens, but also healthcare professionals and society overall. Along with reducing the number of medication errors that arise due to lack of information about a patient’s medical history, the solution improves the working conditions for healthcare practitioners by enabling them with full online access to patients medical files. Thereby, reducing time spent in clarifying current medical information and risk of malpractice and re-admissions.
Trifork and the Danish Health Data Authority has had a long, strategic collaboration focusing on ongoing measures that strengthen both current operational stability, performance, security and business needs across national and local systems involved in the Shared Medication Record landscape.
To build and introduce a shared national infrastructure component was no mean feat. Historically, the data resided in many different local systems, so in order to achieve a consolidated and up-to-date register of medication for all citizens, all parts of the Danish health sector had to join in, and maintain data actively and consistently.
Initially, it was hard to gain a critical mass of users, because this required system integrations, and more importantly, it required changing work processes and obtaining a shared understanding of the domain data. Over time, this has succeeded immensely, and is now seen as an essential component across the Danish health sector, that continuously evolves to support more and more use cases and functionality.
As a strategic technology partner, Trifork took full responsibility of not only the solution, but the end-user experience as well.
The Shared Medication Record (FMK in Danish) is a vital database at the Danish Health Data Authority, storing data on all Danish citizens’ current medication plans, electronic prescriptions and medicine purchases. Over the last 6 months, the Shared Medication Record has had over 1.1 million unique users and has processed over 500 million prescriptions since it launched in 2009.
The Shared Medication Record is used today by almost all healthcare professionals in Denmark across the sectors, e.g. Eletronic Health Record systems, GP systems, Electronic Care Record systems in the municipalities, pharmacy systems, dentist systems and more. In total, about 40 different systems have integrated with the Shared Medication Record.
Trifork continously improves and expands the solution based on the ongoing analysis and clarification work that provides a basis for decisions on new functionality or changes in the core solution. The cooperation with Trifork has been characterised by quick access to the developers and full attention by management. The developers have been proactive with new ideas and advice.
The Shared Medication Record has dramatically reduced risk of erroneous medication and has saved lives by improving the safety and effect of medicational treatment.
This project is the biggest Danish cross-sectoral public healthcare project to date and Trifork continues to deliver the central solution with close to 100% up-time and a strategic and accomplished goal of never needing a service window with down-time, in spite of frequent and often complex updates.
Trifork maintains the position as strategic technology partner and continuously updates the solution to keep up with technology upgrades and improvements.
It has been a very exciting journey together with the Danish Health Data Authority and all the different stakeholders to be able to deliver a national solution with a high complexity in both security and integrations. For Trifork, it has been important during the journey to take responsibility for the full solution – not only Trifork’s part but all the way to the end-users.
The Danish Health Data Authority is responsible for creating coherent health data and digital solutions that will benefit both patients and healthcare professionals, as well as support research and serve administrative purposes. The Authority is part of the Danish Ministry of Health and is responsible for a large number of databases, registers, services and infrastructure that involve data on treatment, population health and medicine consumption.
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