'I Wanted to Create a Simple and Flexible Technology to Help Doctors'
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It’s impossible to imagine modern medicine without engineering and computer solutions. The HSE Master's programme ‘System and Software Engineering’ deals with the development of such innovations. 2018 graduate, Alexandra Gureeva, talks about her project focusing on electronic medical records and which has already been tested at a Moscow clinic.
Alexandra Gureeva
How I Chose My Master’s Programme
By the time I selected my Master's programme, I had already obtained a Bachelor degree in Software Engineering from the Faculty of Computer Science at HSE. I had had a very positive experience in my undergraduate degree. The educational process was well-organized, students could talk to teachers openly, and there was a very modern approach to the whole thing.
I was interested in doing a Master's degree in English. In our field, English is imperative if you want to find work – both in Russia and abroad. Another appealing feature of the programme was the curriculum. In addition to programming, it included project and business management in the field of software.
My Term Paper
The idea of my diploma project did not come to me suddenly - I have been developing software for medicine for several years. The doctors in the department of hepato-pancreato-biliary surgery at the Moscow Clinical Scientific Center supported my idea and they were also involved in the process of determining the final requirements for the project. My term paper in the first year of my Master’s degree focused on a prototype of the system. My skills in creating the application architecture were very helpful in managing the project. In my second year, I was able to concentrate on the development of the final version of the project, and the last half-year of the master's programme was mainly devoted to writing up my project.
What Makes it Unique?
My task was to develop a program to manage electronic medical records of patients which would differ from the solutions already being used. It was to have a number of advantages. In existing programs, the emphasis is usually on the administration and management of the medical center. I wanted to create a simple and flexible tool that would primarily help the medical team, not the administration.
Current systems define the type of medical record for each department in advance. Doctors are sometimes able to add new information however, while the developers are fulfilling the request, they are also creating a function to do so. It goes without saying that this usually takes a long time. With this new technology, doctors are able to use the system without the additional involvement of developers. The developers only set it up at the very beginning.
How Does Blockchain Help?
In addition to electronic medical records, the program enables medical centers to exchange anonymous data. This helps doctors to collect data to write scientific articles. The data exchange between medical organizations is carried out using blockchain technology. This technology is applied in medicine because it helps to ensure reliable storage of data - unlike in other areas, where it is often used simply because it is ‘fashionable’.
What's Next?
The project has successfully passed the testing phase, where the doctors at the hepato-pancreato-biliary surgery department used various functions of the system. The next step is to implement it directly. But this will take time, as the system must pass the certification stage. This is what I plan to achieve in the near future.
International admissions for HSE’s Master’s programmes are open until July 15, 2018. You can apply online.
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