Spri stands for The Swedish Institute for Health Services Department. Spri was organized in 1971 and was funded by both the central government of Sweden and an independent nonprofit institution comprised of The Federation of the City Councils. Computerized Information Related to the Health Care Sector was another name for The Spri study. The study lasted from 1995 to 1999. The Spri study was done in order to obtain a list of the items to be required as input into a generalized health care system in Sweden.
Sweden has computerized patient records for it’s citizens and this study was done to provide the requirements needed to obtain feed back on the costs, the procedures, and the quality of care delivered. The desire to have a list of agreed upon requirements needed to support the activities that were necessary for a generalized health care delivery system was of great importance. One main point of the study was to have the individuals who were going to use the systems be the ones to perform the study and have the input.
There were around 700 people who were already familiar with other systems and even knew the current system that was in use. These 700 were the main investigators for the study. Distribution and redefining of hundreds of surveys that were sent to all powers that be that had dealings with health care. The Spri study resulted in many conclusions, these were separated into four categories: goals, prerequisites, purpose, and user requirements: Goals: Make application systems that can be replaced easily and can be used in different applications while still having a standard interface and at the same time remaining very small.
These systems need to coordinate with process-oriented health care. Purpose: By using superior information processing they are to support excellent health care. Allowing follow-up if desired and research to be performed is important. To be able to access information about costs, quality of care, staff and production using statistical methods is necessary. User requirements: The system needs to be multifunctional.
It needs to support work done with patients on a daily basis as well as have communication capabilities both inside and outside of the patient care unit by using the same common vocabulary to the best of their ability. Prerequisites: The study determined that there was a need for common vocabulary terms; a means to identify the patient; and to have a set of predetermined rules for safety, security and communications.
The future of healthcare is constantly changing and the patients now have access to a magnitude of information via the Internet. Health care systems need to keep up with the changing times and having computerized patient records available to the patient and the health care team at anytime is essential. The Spri Study has paved the way for compliance with these changes. Having systems in place that can be updated in real time and accessed from different areas can only better the delivery care to the citizens.