Slovene smart card and IP based health-care information system infrastructure

Slovenia initiated a nation-wide project to introduce smart cards in the health sector in 1995 and its full-scale deployment started in September 2000. Although the basic aim of the project was to support insurance related procedures, the system was designed in a flexible and open manner to present an infrastructure for the whole health sector. The functionality of the current system is described in this paper along with lessons learned so far. The upgrade of the system is outlined, with emphasis on technical details, the objective being to provide a real-time EDI based environment for a general set of applications in the medical sector, supported by the flexibility and security of modern smart card technologies. Integration with similar systems in other EU countries is discussed.