How Saarland is standardizing reporting in the public health services.
One state administration, six counties – all on one platform: With Polyteia, the Saarland health authorities are creating a common database, automating their reporting obligations and making health data in Saarland comparable and usable for the first time.
About.
Saarland is a federal state in southwest Germany with about one million residents. It is made up of six counties and the Saarbrücken regional government. The public health authorities are responsible for duties such as infection control, health promotion, hygiene oversight, and school health services.
Challenge.
The health authorities in the six counties faced major challenges in fulfilling their reporting obligations to the state administration: Data collection and preparation was mainly done manually in Excel, was time-consuming, error-prone and organized differently in each district. There was no standardized database, which made it difficult to carry out comparable evaluations and a state-wide overview.
Solution.
Under the leadership of Saarlouis county, the six county administrations commissioned Polyteia to provide its platform and additional professional services. The aim was to connect the R23 legacy system for public health, set up and automate data pipelines and provide the employees of the health authorities with a tool for their reporting and data analysis obligations.
Since then the employees of the counties' health authorities can independently analyze developments in the areas of school entry examinations, infection protection, dental care, early intervention and social psychiatric services. Other data sources, for example from internal statistics or external institutions, can be easily integrated via an upload function and combined with the existing R23 data. In addition to individual insights, the health authorities and the state administration can also work together across organizations. This enables joint reporting and analysis as well as controlled data exchange in the public health service. The integrated Forms module is used to digitally record and process decentralized data – for example from schools, daycare centers or medical facilities.
Since the adoption of Polyteia the work of the Saarland public health service has significantly changed: Reporting obligations to the Saarland state administration are fulfilled automatically, data quality has been significantly improved thanks to integrated validation logics, and a common basis for well-founded analyses and comparisons has been created for the first time – both within a district and across district boundaries. In addition, potential health hazards can now be identified much more quickly and appropriate measures initiated at an early stage.
