Health care in Slovakia faces rapid and complicated phase of restructuring and privatization. The relatively poor state of services could be traced to scarce resources for upgrading medical technologies as well as to limited access to information. Therefore the libraries in hospitals, individual physicians, nurses, managers, they all have rather limited access to literature, information and even communication opportunities.
After five years of implementing the
HealthNet-SR Project we could see the need for expanding its potential for gradual
increase of knowledge capabilities and skills of Slovak physicians and students of medicine
and nursing. At the
same time, unrestricted access to information represents one of the cornerstones of
democracy. This particular issue is addressed through the HealthNet project, being
developed in Slovakia during the last two years.
New technologies of computer communications and networking has led OSF to offer Internet capabilities
to wide range of physicians, nurses and other health professionals. The experiences
gained throughout the project run has naturally resulted in many new issues to be developed
further on. The most important one is a question how to offer the technology to maximum
number of potential users with maximizing information flow within the country as well as
between individuals in different countries.
One step in this direction is represented as the
'Medical Internet Project' implemented in Slovakia with financial support provided by Open
Society Fund Slovakia and Open Society Institute, New York, USA.
The HealthNet project's objective is to establish an electronic network for use by Slovak
health care organizations. In the same dimension to create conditions for sustained
information support of health care system in Slovakia through the electronic networking with
incrementally increased proportion of financial participation from users. The network is built
up incrementally over several years.
Submitted by:
Martin Rusnák, MD, PhD, Associated Professor of Public Health
HealthNet principal coordinator
Foundation for Prevention of Civilization Diseases
Pod lipovým 49
Bratislava 841 07
Slovak Republic
Tel/fax: +421 7 64776 275
mobile:+421 903 708 334
Email mrusnak@healthnet.sk
Date submitted: 6 July 1999