‘HIPS’ project that better aligns patients, resources and information flows in care institutions wins Agoria eHealth Award

Consortium of Flemish companies – including Amaron –, hospitals and academics develops methodology that can help care institutions save up to 30% of their supply chain costs.

The annual Agoria eHealth Awards recognize the best ICT projects in the health sector; projects that contribute to administrative simplification and better care – and that also put innovation and good cooperation between the industry and care operators first. The iMinds ‘HIPS’ project is the proud winner of the Agoria eHealth Award in the category of ‘best ICT project that improves quality systems and optimizes processes’. HIPS studied how the information flows and resources in a hospital (staff, infrastructure and medical supplies) can be better aligned to patients’ care paths; the processes in the area of hip surgery were chosen as a concrete application. After its two-year research, the consortium of Flemish companies (Amaron, Aucxis and H.Essers), the hospitals AZ Maria Middelares (Ghent) and AZ Nikolaas (Sint-Niklaas) and a number of academic partners presented a methodology that can help care institutions realize supply chain savings of up to 30%. This is achieved by recording use (and consumption) of medical supplies during an operation in a semi-automated way – through RFID tags and visual recognition technology.

Amaron was in charge of the general coordination of the project and – with its tool Workflower – was responsible for mapping and documenting the hospital processes involved in the chain, and designing a new concept aimed at optimising these processes.