MIDAS system for collecting data from medical institutions of Armenia and their analyses

The MIDAS system is aimed at automation of activities of MoH State Health Agency (SHA) and its marz departments.

The system was developed and implemented by Yerevan Computer Research and Development Institute (YCRDI) with USAID financing and PADCO (USA) company support during 2001-2002.

Follow-up of MIDAS system at YCRDI

The system was implemented at SHA, all its marz departments and in two hospitals (Republican Ophthalmologic Center after S.V. Malayan and "EREBUNI" medical center).

SHA is responsible for targeted and efficient use of financies allocated by State Order for medical care and services. It checks the quality and volume of delivered services by medical institutions and their correspondence to the existing criteria.

SHA signs contracts with medical institutions and medical organizations and carries-out according to these contracts supervision of financial flows, checks reports about actually delivered services and prepares general reports.:

MIDAS system at SHA headquarters

SHA has departments in all Marzes and in Yerevan. Each department receives reports from all medical institutions in its catchment area. Three types of reports (standardized forms – hospital form for State Order services, policlinic form for State Order services and a form for paid services) are developed in paper form and ought to be entered into the database.

The MIDAS system is developed as a uniform one but is implemented in three versions: In SHA (as a republican database incorporating in it all data from all republican medical institutions), in SHA marz departments (as a marz database with data about medical institutions of given marz) and in medical institutions (hospital-policlinic database). Versions are defined during installation of the system.

The MIDAS system uses modern hardware and software.

Main functions of the system.

To define list of medical services and their costs for the volume guaranteed by State budget.

• Distribution of financial means allocated by state budget among medical institutions
• Contracting procedures between SHA and medical institutions which deliver medical services within the limits of State Order.
• Data entry and formation of database of information about patient service delivered by medical institutions.
• Two modes of data entry:
  • traditional (manual)
  • by scanning with semi formalized forms
• Calculation and generalization of expenses for a given period of services rendered by a medical institutions.
• To find out omissions, errors and deviations from the planned finances of medical services.
• To prepare financial and generalized reports.
• To service requests from medical institutions.
• Statistical analyses of database information and search for typical patterns

In the area of computerization of Health system and automation of activities, the MIDAS system makes it possible to supervise expenses by medical institutions within the finances allocated by State Order budget, to check their effective and efficient use. Information of the database makes it possible to supervise quality and volume of rendered services according to the defined criteria.

The MIDAS system ensures information exchange hierarchically (medical institution – Marz department – SHA) with timely and accurate delivery of information

The system automatizes the whole chain of information flow about patients and medical services from the source of information up to the republican database. Data entry is done manually and by scanning the semi formalized forms. Optical Character Recognition System "Mashtots", developed by YCRDI for handwritten Armenian symbols, is widely used. The "Mashtots" system processes the scanned pictures and transforms them to text files.

The system has software package for making statistical analyses and reports about rendered medical services, deceases and financial expenses.

For its outstanding features the MIDAS system was awarded 2003 President's of Armenia prize in Information Technology.

Functional structure of MIDAS system