INCREASING TRANSPARENCY OF DATA OF PUBLIC INTEREST AND IMPROVING SERBIAN HEALTHCARE SYSTEM WITH "FIND A MEDICINE"

Abstract

The main objective of this paper is to present a software system developed to provide access to data of public interest related to Serbian healthcare system. The focus will be on pharmaceutical institutions and information regarding medicines and their availability in pharmacies. Frequent shortages and unbalanced distribution of medicines in pharmaceutical institutions may lead to serious problems in the functioning of the health system. The software integrates and centralize all relevant information from all healthcare institutions in Serbia. As a result, the system provides benefits to all stakeholders: citizens, healthcare institutions and National Health Insurance Fund (NHIF). Citizens can find the nearest pharmacies that has medicines they need at the time. Healthcare institutions integrates data from all organization units - pharmacies, enabling efficient medicines stock management. For the first time NHIF have access to accurate stock level for all medicines in all pharmacies in Serbia. NHIF uses the system to analyze the data in order to make decisions concerning procurements, rationalization, control raising performances and cutting costs of healthcare system. This way NHIF standardized and simplified gathering of information from all pharmaceutical institutions and enabled centralized data analysis, better stock optimization and easier medicine search. Software system is consisted of four integrated modules. Medicines search is provided in the form of web application at NHIF official website, and on Healthcare institutions websites, and also in the form of Android application for smart phones. Besides the system contains data integration module and analysis and reporting module.