Development of innovative software solutions and the introduction of technological innovations in healthcare

The development and introduction of innovative software solutions for the healthcare sector significantly contributed to the business results in the company's initial phase, enabling the expansion of the development team. This segment of activity therefore deserves a somewhat more detailed treatment.

During the first five years of operation, the development team built its competencies and professional reputation in the field of software engineering, creating the largest number of notable references in the public healthcare segment. In the relatively short period between 1989 and 1993, a series of original software solutions for epidemiology, laboratory analytics, and diagnostics were developed and successfully implemented, many of which significantly -- and some of them even crucially -- marked the pioneering era of computing's entry into Slovenian society. As an interesting fact, many of the first PCs that healthcare institutions were acquiring at the time for public health purposes were purchased specifically for the installation and use of software developed at Programski atelje A&Z -- an independent development group. Below is a chronological overview of this exceptionally innovative and productive development period.

In January 1989, the second, redesigned and enhanced version of the SPC_2000 software solution (an upgrade of SPC XXI) was delivered for use, supporting the central procurement, warehousing, and distribution of vaccines, which operated under the auspices and professional supervision of the Institute for Health Protection of the Republic of Slovenia (today's NIJZ).

In June 1989, the implementation period concluded and the Survival_2000 software solution was handed over to the client for regular use. It supported the monitoring of communicable diseases, epidemics, and carriers, as well as the assessment of the situation in the Republic of Slovenia. It was developed in cooperation with epidemiologists at the Institute for Health Protection of the Republic of Slovenia (today's NIJZ). It brought a true technological and organizational revolution to the field of data processing in Slovenian and Yugoslav epidemiology at the time, and therefore deserves a bit more attention. The previous periodic data processing of patients and deaths on a central (mainframe) IBM computer at an external computing center MC was transferred to PC computers on epidemiologists' desks, and data that could now be processed in real time became available to physicians at any moment.

The method and organization of data collection and entry also changed. The previous centrally organized data collection system, in which standardized notification cards with data on patients and deaths from communicable diseases were sent once a month from regional Health Protection Institutes (ZZV) in Ljubljana, Maribor, Kranj, Celje, Novo mesto, Murska Sobota, Ravne na Koroskem, Nova Gorica, and Koper to the Institute for Health Protection of the Republic of Slovenia, where the data was entered into a central registry, was replaced by a modern distributed system. In the newly designed system, data from notification cards was entered into local (regional) registries at regional Health Protection Institutes using the Survival_2000 computer program, from where it was sent in electronic form on floppy disks (the internet and email did not yet exist at that time) to the central registry of patients and deaths from communicable diseases in the Republic of Slovenia.

The solution, which was extraordinarily advanced for its time, attracted great interest from professionals outside Slovenia, and as early as June 1990, the first installation of the program was carried out at the Provincial Institute for Health Protection -- the Institute for Epidemiology in Novi Sad. Although all the republican health protection institutes at the time expressed interest in adopting the Survival_2000 program, as did the parallel health system operating within the Yugoslav military, the further expansion of the program was prevented by the breakup of Yugoslavia. The Survival_2000 software solution operated successfully in Slovenia until 2014 -- a full 25 years -- when it was replaced by new integrated software solutions. In computing, 25 years is an almost infinitely long period, and if we just think about all the changes that occurred during this time in the field of information and telecommunications technologies, it is entirely clear from today's vantage point that Survival_2000 was a visionary solution, far ahead of its time.