COVID-19 special solutions
During the COVID-19 pandemic that began in the spring of 2020, TEHIK developed a number of solutions that made life easier for both doctors and patients during and after the pandemic.
- Solution for COVID-19 laboratory test results, where the result of the analysis performed by the laboratory is sent to the central information system in real time in response to the referral.
- Open data of both COVID-19 patients and vaccinees. The open data was needed by the public, the crisis managers, the scientific advisory board of the government of the republic and other research institutions and the private sector. Open data is available to everyone at https://opendata.digilugu.ee.
- Possibility to open an incapacity for work certificate on the Patient Portal. As many people were forced to take the certificate for incapacity for work in the 2020 crisis, TEHIK created a convenient opportunity for patients to create it by themselves. This enabled to optimise the workload of family physicians at a time when there was a lot of confusion about the emergency and the outbreak of the virus. After the emergency situation, the service was closed and the usual possibility of opening a certificate of incapacity for work was restored.
- The environment Med- SITREP was created for forwarding data on COVID-19 patients and the resources of hospitals. It is a web application where health workers could insert data about free spaces in COVID-19 departments. The data was uploaded to a data warehouse and displayed to the Health Board.
- Displaying the data of COVID-19 patients to family physicians. As family physicians did not have a complete overview of the coronavirus diagnoses of the patients on their list, TEHIK created an automatic capability to give the overview. This allowed family physicians to inquire about their patients with COVID-19 and support them in their recovery if necessary.
- Information exchange with the Police and Border Guard Board. In order to monitor the isolation requirement, TEHIK also created an opportunity for the Police and Border Guard Board to request information from patients who had been tested positive for coronavirus.
- Extension of referrals. Thousands of referrals expired during the state of emergency and the suspension of scheduled medical treatment. In order to prevent all these people from having to call their family physicians one by one, TEHIK automatically extended the validity of referrals for 180 days.
- Robot caller. The robot caller provides information in three languages, informs the recipient that they have been in close contact with someone COVID-19-positive, and gives further advice. In fall 2020, over a thousand of people were monitored by the Health Board, and the number grew manyfold in days. At that time, the focus was on primary contact and warning people, and there was a lack of human resources to do that, TEHIK created a special robot for that.
- Emergency support for parents of children with special needs. Because children with special needs have a weakened immunity that puts them at risk of COVID-19, and their parents had to be temporarily away from work, they received state support. The partial compensation for the loss of income of parents of children with special needs was justified due to the closure of educational institutions and the need to ensure daily home care, learning support and personal care for children with special needs.
- Extension of disability for six months. Due to emergency situation, the disability documents of people who did not manage to submit a new application were extended.