From August 29th to 31st at the Faculty of Information Technology of the Universidad Nacional de La Plata, the new edition of the Argentine Health Information Technology Congress (CAIS) was held for the third consecutive year as part of the Argentine Information Technology Events program (JAIIO) organized by SADIO.

CAIS was once again organized by a union of associations that promote the development of ITC in healthcare in Argentina: the Asociación Argentina de Informática Médica (Argentine Medical Information Technology Association, AAIM), the Comité de Informática Médica de la Asociación Médica Argentina (Medical Information Technology Committee of the Argentine Medical Association, AMA), the Grupo de Informática Biomédica de Buenos Aires (Biomedical Information Technology Group of Buenos Aires, GIBBA), the HL7 Argentina Association, the Sociedad Argentina de Bioingeniería (Argentine Bioengineering Society, SABI) and the la Sociedad Argentina de Informática (Argentine Information Technology Society, SADIO) .

First steps in good company

Throughout the three days and in spite of the fact that the number of visitors was underwhelming – around 140 – there was clear set of attendees who support the event. It was also shown once more that CAIS is a valuable and necessary initiative for anyone interested in learning and finding out more about medical information technology, especially students seeking a future in a promising field and healthcare and information technology professionals looking to expand their skills into the application of ITCs to improve the quality of their work.    

At the opening ceremony, on Wednesday 29th of August, the chairs of the new event, Javier Martín Solá (a director of HL7 Argentina) and Sandra de la Fuente (Faculty of Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Universidad de Chile, Santiago, Chile) welcomed all the participants. With regard to the event’s objective, De la Fuente stated: “The main issue is to build connections between all those involved in the health sector,” referring to the many doctors, technicians, developers, students and businesspeople who were present at the congress. “We want to achieve integration to accompany the major progress that has been made in the ITC area and to create a space for the exchange of knowledge, experience and opinions, for which reason we have gathered experts from different parts of the world such as Brazil, Colombia, Uruguay, Chile and Argentina,” added Solá.  

Martín Díaz (Sadio and the Hospital Alemán), Héctor Repossi (AAIM), Franco Simini (Universidad de la República, Montevideo, Uruguay), Alan March (AAIM) and the event chairs coordinated the different activities.  

Implementation and standards

Julio Leivas from the Medical Federation of the FEMI Project spoke about Health IT in Uruguay in a speech entitled Lessons learned from the integration of health information technology between public and private bodies and the implementation of an electronic health record, whilst Selene Indarte from SUEIDISS described the current state of connectivity standards in Uruguay.

The second day consisted of a presentation and explanation of questions regarding the open standard OpenEHR, in different exhibitions and tutorials provided by Alan March from the Hospital Austral (Argentina), Pablo Pazos (OpenEHR, Uruguay) and Jussara Macedo Rosch (OpenEHR Brazil).

Day 3 saw representatives from different government programs in Health IT in Argentina discuss their experiences. Pablo Binaghi and Gastón Linslata from the Provincial Health Ministry spoke about the status of the Provincial Health System – Sisapro, while Pamela Pérez and Patricia Aguilar from the San Juan Health Ministry showed how the Federal Health Body Registry (REFES) and the Federal Healthcare Professionals Registry (REFEPS) are used and coordinated in the province.

Patricio Petracca and Mabel Maschio, from the National Health Ministry spoke about the National Blood Donor Program and Donors Register (REDOS) and also presented the new ProNaCei Immunization Program, which is integrated with SIISA.

Representatives of the Ministry of Health, Mariano Soratti, Guillermo Williams and Carla Vizzone spoke about said Sistema Integrado de Información Sanitaria Argentina (Integrated Health IT System Argentina), offering news and progress updates on its federal implementation together with the new NomiVac immunization registry.

Diego Kaminker, HL7’s Argentine president, spoke about the organization’s new version of FIHR for mobile devices and tablets and the use of extensions, while the CEO of Mindware, Marcelo Ceitlin, Pablo Orefice from the Banco de Previsión Social de Uruguay (Social Provision Bank of Uriguay) and Marcelo Delgado, from IBM Health and Life Sciences Uruguay, showed how the networks for six Argentine prepaid medical companies (insurers) were implemented.

We’ll meet again

The event closed with a short farewell from Javier Solá and Sandra de la Fuente, which culminated in an improvised photo session with the Chilean, Uruguayan, Colombian and Argentine “delegations” who said their goodbyes, promising to continue promoting exchange in different ways, including a visit to Ehealth Reporter Latin America – to see the photos – until the next event. 

This story originally appeared at E-Health Reporter Latin America.