The e-service developed for the Social Insurance Board helps people to get the needed medical appliances faster and cheaper. We no longer work with data on paper. This is more convenient for our customers and our employees and ensures that the service is received faster.  

What was changed when the e-service was introduced?

We no longer use the personal appliance card on paper, and we have developed real-time data exchange that helps a customer to buy or rent medical appliances with a discount without the paper card. We will proactively notify the person in the system if they have a right to get medical appliances with a discount. The customer can see in real time, which data the service provider has sent to the state about the transactions with the person.
The e-service of medical appliances checks whether a person has the right to get appliances with a state discount. For that, data from different registers is used. In addition, the new e-service calculates how many and which appliances a person can buy with the state discount, and what is the state contribution and how much the person has to pay themselves.

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To whom is it for?

There were 56,000 persons who received medical appliances in 2019. There are approximately 660,000 people in Estonia who have a right to get a state discount when buyings medical appliances. The system is also used by service providers of medical appliances -  167 companies who have 470 service points all over Estonia.

Saves time

Thanks to the e-service, a person no longer has to apply for a paper card from the Social Insurance Board, which saves 105 minutes for customers (time spent to applying for the card). This helps to avoid situations where due to the absent or forgotten card, it is not possible to give the discount, or the proceeding has to be postponed.

User experience

User experience has a very important role in the service of medical appliances. According to the target group of the service, special attention was paid to WCAG requirements. End users and service providers were involved in designing the solution, and user tests were carried out. The style book of the Information System Authority (Veera) was used as the visual and conceptual basis of the solution.

Technology

The service of medical appliances has cloud readiness, as the information system of the Social Insurance Board (incl. the service of medical appliances) is hosted by the infrastructure that complies with the basic requirements of the Government Cloud. For secure and verifiable data exchange, X-tee services and a data monitor have been introduced. Thanks to the data monitor, the service is transparent.

Latest developments

The development of the e-service of medical appliances has been planned to be implemented in many stages. In the first stage, a digital personal medical appliance card was developed, which enables to perform transactions in real time, which calculates the compliance of the transaction to the conditions of the list of medical appliances and checks the calculation of limit prices.

In the first stage, we simplified the client view, but as a result of these developments, the administrative burden of service providers increased. In the second stage, the possibilities of automation (incl. digitalisation) of the service will be analysed. The main goal of the analysis is to find out what is the most reasonable way to decrease the administrative burden of service providers, and how to guarantee secure data exchange in the process. This would mean the increase in the quality of data, on the basis of which a payment notice to the service provider could be created in the beginning of next month. based on the information of a real time transaction.

As an outcome of the analysis project, an analysis for developing the 2. stage of e-services of medical appliances has been completed, as a course of which the necessary user stories and development volume have been identified.

The cost of the analysis of the second stage is 84,000 euros and the planned time of completion is the I quarter of 2021. Eligible costs: 71,863.68 euros. The eligibility period of the project: 17.11.2020 to 16.07.2021.

The development of the second stage of the e-service of medical appliances

The goal of the second stage of the e-services of medical appliances is to develop a convenient e-service both for service providers and customers. Due to the developments, the administrative burden of both the service providers and the state will decrease, and a new calculation logic will be created. In addition, the additional possibilities of special proceedings will be made visible to service providers and customers.

At the same time, preliminary work will continue on digitising the certificates of medical appliances and improving the convenience of the service.

Funding

The cost of second stage analysis is 84,000 euros and the estimated time of completion is the I quarter of 2021. Eligible costs: 71,863.68 euros. Eligibility period: 17.11.2020 to 16.07.2021.

The cost of second stage development is 496,962.32 euros and the estimated time of completion: the II quarter of 2022. Eligibility period: 11.05.2021 to 30.06.2022.

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