DIABCARD a smart card for patients with chronic diseases

Within the European Union-sponsored project DIABCARD, the core of a chip-card-based medical information system for patients with chronic diseases, exemplified on diabetes mellitus, has been developed. The long-term goal of the project is to improve the medical record and the quality of care for patients with chronic diseases. The basic idea is to have a portable electronic medical record on a smart card. This will improve the communication between the different healthcare personnel and between different institutions and, at the same time, promote shared care. The DIABCARD chip-card-based medical information system will offer controlled access to the necessary and up-to-date patient record to everyone involved in the patient's treatment, and it will help reduce the constantly rising healthcare expenditure. The system first was implemented in a small version. The system architecture contains hardware, software, and orgware. It considers especially the memory of the chip card, the processor, the data structure, security functions, the operating system on the chip card, the interface between the chip card and the application, and various application areas. The DIABCARD dataset was defined via an information model, which describes the different communication processes, via acknowledged diabetes datasets and medical scenarios. It includes, among others, emergency data, data for quality assurance, and data for blood glucose self-monitoring. The first prototype has been developed, and a pilot was run for 3 months.