Digitising Healthcare: GE HealthCare's Partnership with IB-Salut in the Balearic Islands
Information systems and electronic medical records are regular features in most hospitals, helping to standardise care across healthcare systems, remove human admin errors and improve the sustainability of settings by using less paper. They provide working databases that can be accessed and edited at any time, and stored for years to come, reducing the risk of paper copies being lost. GE HealthCare has worked closely with IB-Salut – an organisation that provides healthcare services to over 1.2 million people in the Balearic Islands – for more than two decades to digitise its practices and optimise them for patients, clinicians and technicians. The initial digitisation project, which spanned several of IB-Salut’s seven public hospitals, 58 healthcare centres and 40 primary care settings, resulted in the organisation being the first autonomous healthcare service in Spain to merge and migrate all of its data onto the same digital information system.
Pioneering Digitisation through Strategic Partnership
When the collaboration between IB-Salut and GE HealthCare began in 2001, digital practices were extremely rare and healthcare providers across Europe mostly relied on paper-based records and printed images. The partnership between the two companies began at the Son Llàtzer Hospital with the goal of introducing innovative digital systems, as Dr Carmen Martínez*, Head of Radiology Services at Son Llàtzer Hospital, part of IB-Salut, explained: “The project aimed to create a paperless hospital, which was very pioneering at the time. We were therefore looking for a supplier that had some experience in picture archiving and communication systems (PACS), radiology information systems (RIS) and particularly in integrating electronic medical records, which barely existed in Europe at the time. That’s why we started working with GE HealthCare, using its expertise from the United States to build this project from the ground up.”
A collaborative effort
The project was a significant undertaking that required overhauling three databases at seven hospitals, where all data had to be standardised. The outcome was a single, unified database, including information from RIS and PACS imaging systems, that is standardised across all sites. Open conversations between IT and clinicians were an essential part of the process to ensure that both the functional and technical requirements were fully understood. Naturally, as digitisation was an entirely novel concept, there were some initial concerns from clinicians, who had been reviewing physical paper copies for their entire careers. It was incredibly important that the team from GE HealthCare listened to the clinicians to understand their capabilities and needs. Soon enough, all the clinicians could see the benefits of transitioning to electronic systems, as they no longer needed to print and sign sheets by hand, and reports could be accessed from anywhere in the hospital so they, or the patient, were not responsible for hand delivering information.
Laura Martínez Galiano*, IT Project Manager at IB-Salut, commented on her experience: “This project required collaboration between GE HealthCare, IT and clinicians to review both the technical and functional requirements. GE HealthCare listened to all our stakeholders, taking into account their requirements in order to understand how far we could go with digitisation. Without these parties working hand-in-hand, it would have been very difficult to reach a successful conclusion.”
Transparent communication
Since this initial project, IB-Salut has continued to work with GE HealthCare to refine, optimise and maintain its digital systems. This has evolved into a long-standing partnership with weekly update meetings, where representatives from the two organisations discuss both project-level issues and incidents that may arise on a day-to-day basis. In addition to this, there are regular meetings led by the Radiology Services team, where all functional issues are discussed and resolved, providing crucial learning opportunities for both sides. Laura explained: “Our relationship is not a supplier-client one. Instead, we have grown together and learnt from each other. We have follow-up meetings with the GE HealthCare team every week, and it is just as important for us to listen to them, as it is for them to listen to the needs of the teams providing the service and support in the hospital.”
The close cooperation and clear, transparent communication between GE HealthCare technicians, and the IT team and clinicians at IB-Salut has created a strong working relationship that enables the hospital to provide the best service possible. Juan Gabriel Bernal, Field Engineer at GE HealthCare, commented: “From the position of a field engineer, I believe transparency is the key to making relationships and projects work. It must be very clear what is needed, so that each task can be performed quickly and diligently; why wait to perform tasks tomorrow that can be done today. Our relationship has always been very cooperative, positive and proactive, and we understand each other clearly.”
Laura continued: “The attitude of both teams was very important, and was one of the biggest reasons that the project – despite its difficulties – has been a success. There was no differentiation between the provider, the IT teams and the clinicians; we were all the same team with the same goal.”
Future collaborations
The introduction of digital platforms into IB-Salut’s everyday practices has positioned the organisation as a strong and united healthcare provider with standardised care for patients. A significant factor that continues to ensure the success of this partnership is the joint motivation, vision and focus that the teams share. This became a critical differentiating factor that ensured the success of the digitisation project, and has enabled the partnership to continue, with the GE HealthCare team becoming an extension of the IB-Salut group. Rafael Valera, Field Engineer at GE HealthCare, added: “GE HealthCare has been working with IB-Salut for over 20 years; we can look back and see the path that we have taken together, and we look forward to where we want to go in the future.”
Dr Martínez concluded: “We hope to continue collaborating with GE HealthCare in the future and, above all, maintain the mutual understanding that has already led to great results for both users and patients.”
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*Dr Carmen Martínez, Laura Martínez Galiano and GEHC do not have a contractual relationship beyond the fact of being a GEHC product end user. Their statements are based on their own opinions and on results that were achieved in the customer's unique setting. Actual results may vary. GE HealthCare does not guarantee results.
