The Internet and healthcare in Taiwan: value-added applications on the medical network in the National Health Insurance smart card system.
The introduction of smart card technology has ushered in a new era of electronic medical information systems. Taiwan's Bureau of National Health Insurance (BNHI) implemented the National Health Insurance (NHI) smart card project in 2004. The purpose of the project was to replace all paper cards with one smart card. The NHI medical network now provides three kinds of services. In this paper, we illustrate the status of the NHI smart card system in Taiwan and propose three kinds of value-added applications for the medical network, which are electronic exchange of medical information, retrieval of personal medical records and medical e-learning for future development of health information systems.
Tsai
Wen-Hsien
WH
Department of Business Administration, National Central University, Jhongli, Taoyuan 320, Taiwan. whtsai@mgt.ncu.edu.tw
Kuo
Hsiao-Chiao
HC
D003195:Computer Communication Networks / Q000458:organization & administration; D016494:Computer Security; D020375:Education, Distance; D004502:Education, Medical, Continuing; D006801:Humans; D007256:Information Systems / Q000458:organization & administration; D020407:Internet; D008498:Medical Record Linkage; D016347:Medical Records Systems, Computerized / Q000458:organization & administration*; D009313:National Health Programs / Q000458:organization & administration*; D010353:Patient Education as Topic; D018511:Systems Integration; D013624:Taiwan