Mobile communication & health
E-health refers to the low-cost and safe use of state-of-the-art, digital information and communication technologies in the health and nursing sector as well as to the digital storage, documentation and processing of health data. E-health is the cornerstone of a modern, integrated health management system. It raises the quality of medical care and treatment and offers advantages to all stakeholder groups, physicians, pharmacists, healthcare providers and patients alike. For the patient e-health means multi-disciplinary, high-quality, patient- focused care, whereas doctors can benefit from efficient surgery practice management and faster clinical decision-making thanks to an improved knowledge of the patient’s history. In public health systems, e-health promotes efficiency and urgently needed cost reductions. To support e-health A1 has set up a Public Sector & Health department.
Eighty percent of all Austrian public health service doctors are connected to the Austrian e-card system, the electronic administration system of the Austrian statutory health insurance funds, via A1 network infrastructure. The company’s high-security Health Information Network rolled out in 2005 and its latest up-graded e-card Hardware GINA (the German acronym for the Health-Information-Network- Adapter), introduced in March 2011, provide the technical basis for future innovative e-health applications. Since 1999, A1 has offered a telemedicine data network (DaMe) service that enables the secure exchange of patients’ medical records between hospitals, laboratories and doctors. The content and structure of medical reports are filed in a standardized and clearly structured format, making it easier to integrate them into patients' records. This state-of-theart technology also allows for the transmission of multimedia data such as x-ray images, sonograms or video sequences. Furthermore, the company offers radiologists a highly available long-term archive that meets the latest security standards.
