In order to maintain customer satisfaction and further increase its market share, CompuGroup incurs considerable cost and effort in development work to ensure that it is always able to offer the latest software and service products. the development work undertaken by CompuGroup relates to both, new developments and refinements to existing technolo- gies. Central development is divided into three main areas:
• Where possible and technically feasible, components of the existing information systems for doctors and dentists are developed centrally and offered to the individual product lines for integration in their systems. In some fields, this avoids overlaps in the development of identical product functions prescribed by law. the application of this method is nevertheless subject to several restrictions, as it involves well delineated, stand-alone functions which require little effort for integration into primary systems.
• platform products which are essentially independent products plugged into the doctor or dentist systems via interfaces. examples of these include electronic archiving systems or systems to manage appointments and optimise organisational procedures.
• Development of a new generation of information systems for doctors and dentists which make a clear segregation between the business logic and the user interface (or visualisation layer). this segregation makes it possible to implement the core functions through one-off development and maintenance work, these functions then being subsequently deployed in different products and their individual user interfaces.
CompuGroup’s development activities vary according to segment. products are mainly de- veloped by permanently employed staff. In a few areas, products are also developed in co-operation with external service providers. as at 31st December 2007, CompuGroup employed around 674 people in software development work across the whole group. Integrated Health Provider Services (HPS)
Development work in the HpS sector is characterised by the continuous updating of Doctor Information Systems caused by regular changes in billing rules and processes, partly due to the requirements of medical and dental health insurance schemes, and by the imple- mentation of innovations and improvements in existing products. Currently, this develop- ment work is largely carried out by the individual subsidiaries, which have development teams generally consisting of around 10 people. numerous teams across the group focus on adapting software products to new or amended legislative or contractual requirements on time. program updates are usually required once every quarter, depending on the discipline and region. In the preparation of these quarterly updates, the first half of the quarter is generally used to incorporate innovations and improvements in the systems. legal amendments are implemented thereafter. all new features are transmitted to customer It systems primarily through quarterly updates. these essential regular program updates are provided to customers either physically on a data carrier or by putting them available on the internet for downloading.
the enhancement of products abroad does not usually follow the quarterly update cycles ap- plicable in Germany as medical services are not generally billed by doctors on a quarterly basis. In France in particular, the billing of medical services used to be less complex in the past and was therefore subject to fewer ongoing changes. More complex billing codes
requiring a higher update frequency have only been introduced in stages over recent years. as the great majority of French doctors still bill online, updates are likewise transmitted online and are thus not subject to fixed intervals.
the products are also developed by the individual subsidiaries of CompuGroup Holding. at present the whole of CompuGroup is working on the development of a new software generation, both for Doctor Information Systems and for Hospital Information Systems. In this context, the company plans to concentrate part of its development activities on central, inter-system software components.
Health Connectivity Services (HCS)
In contrast to the HpS segment, development on new software products in the HCS segment is centralised. the main development work in this segment is performed by CompuGroup Software GmbH, which has a development department with on average 20 employees. the development work is carried out across platforms in close co-operation with the development departments of the CompuGroup companies in the HpS segment, as HCS products are generally employed in all Doctor Information Systems of CompuGroup. typical examples include Verax-liste and the Doc portal. In contrast to the HpS segment, the development cycles in the HCS segment are not necessarily tied to quarterly cycles. Data updates associated with these products (e.g. for Verax-liste) are generally issued together with the quarterly updates for the DIS systems.
Electronic Patient Services (EPS)
Development work in the epS segment essentially follows the same pattern as in the HCS segment. the company has a dedicated team at vita-X aG that concentrates solely on the development of the vita-X electronic patient record. Development of the vita-X system was and still is one of the most demanding development projects undertaken by CompuGroup. the vita-X system comprises three components in total: the decentralised security and communication component interfacing with the Doctor Information Systems, the central server component and the central Customer relationship Management (CrM) system. the decentralised component accesses the electronic patient record via the vita-X card, which contains what are known as pointers and the encoding details that are used to find the medical data stored anonymously on central, high-security servers. the central server components store the data of the electronic patient record and authorise a doctor to ac- cess the patient’s data. all medical data kept on the central server systems are stored in anonymous, encrypted form. the storage procedure conforms to the requirements of the Data protection act and has been patented throughout europe.