LinkTech provides a unique user-defined interface that allows a user to determine the type and content of the data collected thus providing health administrators and funding agencies the tools for the delivery of capitated funding, public health interventions, sector planning and much more. Using the flexible data loaders and table management wizards, users can track patient demographics, interface with mapping systems for the plotting of populations and health information, log telephone and other contact with providers, track provider membership, help administer provider payments and interface with popular Microsoft applications such as MS Office.
Data acquisition and reporting can be customised by the user, allowing the generation of unique reports and queries, questionnaires and documents. For standard reporting, built in wizards lead the user safely and easily through the process. Extensive help screens, a consistently applied user interface, on screen hints plus an extensive support and help desk service combine to make LinkTech the simplest of systems to implement and use.
Data is acquired either manually or electronically. Data received from Practice Management Systems is cleansed by the application of user selected validation rules and then passed through a seamless integration phase to update the central register. Duplicate patient records are identified both within and between practices, and reports on validation failures are produced for each practice. The use of advanced client/server technology SQL database and state-of-the-art development techniques ensure that the data is safe and the database integrity is preserved. LinkTech has been in use by IPAs in New Zealand for over 3 years housing databases of up to 1 million patient records and is now used extensively by the newly formed Primary Health Organisations.
Login access of users, audit trails on each database record and allocation of user access rights combine to provide a high level of security for the database. Data remains in-house and as required is transmitted over secure liens such as the Health Intranet to the relevant funding agency.
The LinkTech data model is highly normalised and rigorously designed. It is built to allow healthcare organisations to keep accurate demographic and health status records of their patient population. Built in to the database are columns for important data such as ethnicity, deprivation indices, geocodes, occupation, utilisation data, health events such as immunisations and cervical smears and chronic illnesses. Reporting and analysis is able to be done at the healthcare organisation with no requirement for a third party to provide this service.
Specific LinkTech features include: