Copenhagen and Aalborg live with Kommunal PRO

Copenhagen Municipality and Aalborg Municipality are leading the way with the implementation of the new electronic dialogue and collaboration tool “Kommunal PRO” (in English “Municipal PRO”), which contributes to the efficiency of patient reporting and exchange of health information across municipalities and sectors. Copenhagen Municipality and Aalborg Municipality are currently piloting the solution, and soon six other municipalities will follow suit. From March 2023, the solution will be rolled out to all other municipalities in the country.

Kommunal PRO is the first of an expected number of solutions to run on the joint municipal telemedicine infrastructure (FUT).

"With the new solution, it has become easier to exchange health information across the health sector, and at the same time we are strengthening the involvement of citizens. It has been exciting to be involved in both the development of the solution but also to be the first to test Kommunal PRO in action" Rikke Saltoft, Head of Digitization in the Health and Care Administration, states in a press release from the Municipality of Copenhagen.

Increased citizen involvement and cross-functional cooperation

Kommunal PRO is a common national solution provided by Systematic with MedWare as a subcontractor. The solution enables PRO data (patient-reported information) to be collected and shared across municipalities and sectors. The initiative has evolved in collaboration between 97 of the country's municipalities and it utilises the joint municipal telemedicine infrastructure (FUT).

Among other things, Kommunal PRO allows for the creation and setting up of questionnaires, the allocation of and sending out questionnaires to citizens as well as data display and data extraction from the responses. The municipalities can also share templates for questionnaires and eventually answers locally and across municipalities.

With Kommunal PRO, the municipalities ensure that professionals gain better insight into the citizen's situation and can filter and prioritize information even before meeting up with them. At the same time,the solution offers the citizens the opportunity to take responsibility for their own health journey, as the electronic questionnaires enable them toaccess their own information and prepare before an interview with the municipality.

"The patient can fill out questionnaires and provide information about their condition from home by e.g. registering side effects of a treatment. This way, employees can better target the dialogue and supportive treatment based on the individual patient. In this way, Kommunal PRO is used as both dialogue support and treatment support," says Brian Fisker, Vice President at Systematic.

New opportunities and better workflow

Despite an increase in digitalisation, many municipalities still use paper-based surveys. This entails the risk of sharing sensitive personal information, manual workflows, lack of an overview of responses, as well as an incoherent process for the citizen.

With the Kommunal PRO solution, data can be collected, compared, and shared across municipalities, which makes a significant difference for both employees and citizens. At a later stage, it will be possible to share data across the entire healthcare sector, which makes this solution a first step on the way towards a continuum of care.

In addition to sharing and comparing data across municipalities and sectors, the specific benefits are:

• Increased involvement of the citizen in their own course of treatment/rehabilitatio
• Ongoing assessment of the citizen's condition and help with various forms of decision support
• Improved dialogue between healthcare workers and the citizens, based on the citizen's own assessment
• Easier to organise the citizen's course internally in the municipality and across sectors in the healthcare system
• A foundation of data to be used in impact assessment and quality development
• Transparency in relation to the effect of treatment courses for use in quality development
• Supported structure for following-up on treatment as a sort of checklist
• No personal information on paper