Satakunta Macro Pilot is a wide development project in social services and the health care sector in Satakunta region in Finland. By developing new technology the project aims to increase effectiveness and to reduce costs in the social and health care sector and to promote client centred ways of working. The Finnish Ministry of Social Affairs and Health selected a consortium consisting of seven municipalities, three community health care centres and the hospital district of Satakunta to carry out the Macro Pilot project in November 1998. The first phase of the project went on until August 2001, the second phase started in September 2001 and will continue until the end of the year 2003. In the second phase the Macro Pilot is a regional project, with all the municipalities of the Satakunta region taking part in the project.
Macro Pilot covers several development areas. In seamless services the client's social and health care services in various organisations are integrated with each other and produced in an economical and effective way. The seamless service chain is based on information technology, in which the client's social and health care information contained in various data systems is available for the use of professional service providers in all service situations and organisations - on the client's approval. The system developed for this purpose is known as the regional information system, which uses a "smart card" based social insurance card as a guarantee of data security.
The regional information system has so far (12/2001) proceeded into a testing phase for social and health care professionals. The building of the regional information system has been delayed, which has considerably effected the implementation of the operational projects. The common information system could not be exploited in the opera-tional projects during the first phase of the Macro Pilot. Anyhow, new development processes and co-operation across the organisational boundaries of the social and health care sector have been initiated. Good operating models have been created, but developing an open client oriented information system, which could support these models in practise, is still the future challenge.
last update 2002-03-18