"Technology for Health" now also in Switzerland

Mar 1 2006

The international eHealth specialist InterComponentWare AG (ICW) is now represented in Switzerland, too: Based in Zurich, the new subsidiary InterComponentWare (Schweiz) AG will support the implementation of innovative eHealth solutions throughout Switzerland.

ICW, which was founded in 1998 in Walldorf, Germany, and its subsidiaries in Austria, Bulgaria, and the U.S. have many years of experience in the still young growth market for eHealth: For example, the company was involved in the deployment of the Austrian eCard and, as part of the bIT4health consortium, advised the German federal government in the development of the healthcare IT infrastructure for the electronic health card.

To advance the development of the electronic health card technology, ICW started the first field test for its personal health card system in Walldorf in June 2005. The system can handle not only the mandatory applications of the electronic health card – such as electronic prescription or patient master data – but also offers the web-based personal health record LifeSensor as an important voluntary application: Citizens can store copies of their relevant health data in their online personal health record in an organized manner and make them available to their physicians and pharmacists. Furthermore, the online file is being used in several physician networks, for example in the Bavarian Patient-Partner Association, which uses LifeSensor to provide its over 340 physicians with a common database on their patients.

For a large chain of clinics, ICW developed a networking solution that enables previously incompatible hospital information systems to exchange medical data, without having to replace existing software. Thus the authorized physicians and nursing personnel have access to all the data on a patient in a clinic network in a virtual patient file that is available at the click of a mouse.

Martin Fuchs, CEO of ICW Schweiz: “The ICW Group has already amassed extensive experience in international projects in the eHealth market. With this experience we will adapt the proven ICW solutions exactly to Swiss requirements and thus contribute to the rapid creation of a functioning healthcare IT infrastructure.”