Gecamed, an open source Electronic Health Record system developed in Luxembourg since 2007, is already used by more than 10 per cent of all general practitioners in the country. It is also the first EHR system in Luxembourg to achieve interoperability with the health records management system used by eSanté, the country’s national eHealth agency, says Guido Bosch, a research engineer at the Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology.
The open source EHR is “ideal to transfer knowledge to other EHR developing companies in Luxembourg”, Bosch said, speaking at the Medetel conference in Luxembourg on 22 April. “It allows users to be on the technological forefront for EHR interoperability.”
Gecamed (Gestion de Cabinets Médicaux) will continue to get new features, developers are planning to include electronic prescriptions and electronic handling of payments.
LIST started the development of Gecamed in 2007, when the bankruptcy of a proprietary software vendor meant doctors were left without support for their EHR solution. The development was originally funded by the Ministry of Culture, Higher Education and Research, the country’s medical association (AMMD) and two multinational pharmaceutical companies. The software is now also supported by the consortium developing Luxembourg’s eSanté platform.
The software is currently supported by three Luxembourg IT service providers.
Medical standards
Gecamed is now used by approximately 110 generalists and specialists as their practice management system, Bosch said. “Facilitating interoperability between systems from different vendors is one of our aims”, he explained. The open source solution implements well-known medical standards, including HL7 and DICOM.
Gecamed developers took part in a organised by IHE, a healthcare IT standardisation and trade body, taking place during the Medetel conference in Luxembourg. The software engineers succeeded to pass the IHE conformance tests for several of the IHE profiles and actors related to document exchange. It makes Gecamed the first Luxembourg-developed EHR system compliant with IHE requirements.
More information:
Gecamed
Presentation by Guido Bosch at the 2015 Medetel conference
Announcement on IHE conformity