Implementation of common clinical ICT systems (FIKS)
The Northern Norway Regional Health Authority aims to ensure that all patients in the region get equal access to high-quality healthcare. This lead to the establishment of the FIKS program.
Through the FIKS1 program, common clinical ICT systems for all 11 hospitals in northern Norway are being developed and deployed. This includes clinical systems for electronic patient records, lab, radiology, pathology, and electronic charts and medication handling. In addition, FIKS provides a solution for general practitioners and primary care facilities to requisition laboratory services electronically.
Historically, hospitals have distributed paper records manually as the patient moves between facilities in the region. The goal of the FIKS program is to make the electronic patient record of every patient accessible to healthcare professionals in all 11 hospitals in the region. This is a huge step toward better safety for the patient.
FIKS runs along several partly overlapping tracks:
- Development of new electronic patient record (EPR) functionality
- Standardization of clinical systems, -work, and -processes
- Modeling of an appropriate organization
- Implementation of the new ICT systems
1FIKS is an acronym for “Felles Innføring av Kliniske Systemer” (en. “Common Deployment of Clinical Systems”). The acronym is pronounced equivalently to the English verb “to fix”.