Health Care Business Arena 2012, the regional conference on business in the health care industry, organized by Infoarena and under the auspices of the Ministry of Health, was held in the “Regent Esplanade” in Zagreb, on May 24 and 25, 2012.
The healthcare system, as one of key the public operations in the whole community, has been faced with additional challenges to preserve stability and quality of offered services in these times of economic recession. Consequently, the service providers in this sector have also been faced with needs to adaptations. The communications among all participants in the health care system, exchange of ideas, experiences discussions on possible solutions may contribute the quality of the system functioning. Just because of that, the aim of the conference was to encourage the exchange of ideas on the processes in the system, in order to rationalize expenses and maintain the good quality synergy, especially among the management, end user service providers and suppliers. The conference was an excellent opportunity to present new projects as far as their efficiency and potential is concerned.
The greatest interest was devoted to announcements of certain investments and the reorganizations in some segments of the health care system planned for 2012. It was presented at the round table under the title “Public and private sector partnership in the health care system, potential of service improvements”. Besides Siniša Varga, the Director of the Croatian Institute for Health Insurance (HZZO), many eminent specialists from the health care segment participated in the round table. Once again, they underlined the limitations of the health insurance financing model, the majority of which comes form the government budget and the low share and contribution by the private health insurance.
The round table titled “Information technologies in health care system” dealt with the role of ICT in the health care system management and the growth of the health care efficiency based on the given technology. The introductory paper “Integrated informatization as an inevitable prerequisite of efficient management in the healthcare system” read by Miroslav Mađarić, DSc, IT adviser to the director pointed out a huge role of informatization in cost reduction and more efficient functioning of the health care system. He also stressed the need for larger budget in the given area The moderator of the round table was Ivan Pristaš, the head of the Information management unit in the HZZO, and the other participants were Tatjana Prenđa Trupec, assistant director for IT, HZZO, Miroslav Mađarić and Darko Gvozdanović, the manager and specialist from Ericsson Nikola Tesla in e-health segment, as well as representatives of other providers in the given area. Darko Gvozdanović underlined the need to set a clear vision on the use of the information and communications technology in the health care, with good planning and feasible targets. He presented a variety of opportunities available to upgrade the existing systems in short and mid-term, thus enabling the capitalization of former investments. This means, for example, that by means of available data on medicines taken by a particular patient, a specialist doctor my save time when taking medical history and avoid dangerous mistakes that may occur due to possible negative interactions of medicines. He also added that quite a job has already been done in this segment, but still one shall look ahead and consequently make a decision on further steps in the e-health development in Croatia.
