Title: The internet and healthcare in Taiwan: value-added applications on the medical network in the National Health Insurance smart card system

Authors: Wen-Hsien Tsai, Hsiao-Chiao Kuo

Addresses: Department of Business Administration, National Central University, Jhongli, Taoyuan 320, Taiwan. ' Department of Business Administration, National Central University, Jhongli, Taoyuan 320, Taiwan; Department of Industrial Management, China University of Technology, Ho-Kou, HsinChu 303, Taiwan

Abstract: 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.

Keywords: smart cards; medical networks; electronic data exchange; medical e-learning; internet; Taiwan; value-added; national health insurance; electronic healthcare; e-health; medical information systems; personal medical records; medical record retrieval; online learning.

DOI: 10.1504/IJEH.2007.015321

International Journal of Electronic Healthcare, 2007 Vol.3 No.4, pp.417 - 432

Published online: 08 Oct 2007 *

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