General questions
The Refugee Care Manager (Ref.Care) is a customized medical documentation software specifically for the health care of asylum seekers in reception centres. It enables simple and systematic documentation in outpatient clinics and offers locally hosted digital patient records (not cloud-based).
Ref.Care was developed as part of a research and implementation project called Pri.Care funded by the Federal Ministry of Health. This project was carried out by the Section for Health Equity Studies & Migration section at Heidelberg University Hospital in close collaboration with medical providers in the reception facilities and with the responsible authorities.
The project funding ended in 2020. Since then, the Ref.Care software has been put into routine operation in many facilities and is continuously being further developed and new functions added.
Ref.Care has been specifically developed for use in reception facilities for refugees and is continuously being further developed in close coordination with users.
This ensures that specific requirements for medical documentation in reception centers can be taken into account during the ongoing development of the software.
Ref.Care generally offers role-based functions to both medical and non-medical staff functions to support and document medical care in the reception centers.
Ref.Care also offers the option of exchanging care data electronically and in encrypted form between facilities for the purpose of coordinated and continued treatment, provided that all participating facilities also use Ref.Care.
Based on the documented treatment data, the integrated surveillance module enables the fully anonymized calculation of relevant care indicators, which can be evaluated both at the facility level and across multiple facilities. In addition to supporting care planning in the facilities, this also helps to gain further research findings in this area.
Questions about use
Facilities using Ref.Care have the option – with the patient’s consent – to transmit relevant findings between admission facilities in encrypted and digital form in compliance with data protection regulations (e.g. when transferring patients).
The care data collected can be regularly evaluated anonymously according to a specially developed set of indicators. A research association called Pri.Carenet has been established and will continue to exist in the long term. All facilities using Ref.Care can join this network.
RefCare enables comprehensive digital documentation of medical treatment in reception facilities. In simple terms, Ref.Care can be divided into four functional areas:
- Administrative functions: Management of patient master data and user data.
- Electronic patient file: Comprehensive documentation of the medical consultation (including medical history, findings, diagnosis, therapy) incl. progress view.
- Advanced medical functions such as writing doctor’s letters, creating standardized forms (e.g. prescriptions, referrals) and much more.
- Surveillance module: Anonymized statistical evaluation of care data at the “click of a mouse”, view and download evaluation results for local use and voluntary export of anonymized results for cross-institution analysis.
- Transfer module: Data protection-compliant and encrypted digital transfer of individual patient files or findings to other facilities that work with Ref.Care. The prerequisite for this is the consent of the patient concerned.
Patient records can be transmitted digitally and in encrypted form between facilities that use Ref.Care. This requires the consent of the patient concerned. Patient records can be requested by other facilities as well as sent “in advance”.
Detailed step-by-step instructions can be found in the manual, which you can access in the “Help” section of Ref.Care. If you have any further questions or problems, please contact our support team. Hotline: 06221 56-8077 (Mon – Fri 08:00 – 12:00 and 13:00 – 16:00).
Please contact the person with Ref.Care administrator rights in your institution and ask them to reset your password. If you have any further questions or problems, please contact our support team. Hotline: 06221 56-8077 (Mon – Fri 08:00 – 12:00 and 13:00 – 16:00).
Questions about implementation and operation
If you are interested in Ref.Care, we will be happy to provide you with a non-binding demo version of Ref.Care without obligation. Simply write to us and we will send you the access data.
The introduction of Ref.Care in your institution will be supported by our implementation team and will be geared to your needs. This includes (online) training and on-site support during consultation hours on two days.
During operation, we provide free updates and ensure ongoing IT support via a telephone hotline. We are also happy to provide support for backing up and archiving treatment data.
We also provide you with a user manual and various quick reference guides.
We offer all users (online) training prior to the introduction of RefCare. In addition, training can be requested in the event of a change of operator and up to four follow-up training sessions per year if required.
Ref.Care requires a local server installation and runs browser-based. The following hardware requirements are recommended as a minimum:
- Processor: Intel Core i5 or higher
- Memory: 16GB
- Hard disk: 512GB SSD
- NW card
- Operating system: Win10 or Win11
The server installation can be carried out on existing hardware on site, for this the firewall on TCP port 443 (https) must be open for incoming and outgoing connections. TeamViewer access is required for the duration of the installation and for support.
Notebook
- Processor: Intel Core i5 or higher
- Working memory: 8GB
- Hard disk: 256GB SSD
- NW card
- Operating system Win10 or Win11
- NAS
Printer
- NW printer is recommended
- At least two, if possible three paper trays (A4, A5, A6)
If you would like to use Ref.Care in your outpatient clinic, please write to us at Refcare.AMED@med.uni-heidelberg.de with details of your institution, the number of workstations you require and your contact details including telephone number. We will contact you as soon as possible.
The license costs for the Ref.Care software depend on the scope of use and the number of workstations in the outpatient clinic. If you are interested, please contact us for a non-binding offer.
The licenses are based on a non-commercial licensing model between public institutions, which means that any income is spent exclusively on the use and further development of the software for specific projects. There is no profit.
The RefCare documentation software is offered by the Health Equity Studies & Migration section of the Department of General Medicine and Health Services Research at Heidelberg University Hospital.
Ref.Care fulfills all data protection requirements of a medical information system. As the developer and provider of Ref.Care, Heidelberg University Hospital ensures that the software is state of the art, particularly with regard to data protection and data security.
All treatment data is stored exclusively on local servers in the facilities themselves. Only persons involved in the medical treatment have access.
Data may only be passed on for the purpose of medical co-treatment and further treatment if the patient concerned has given their consent and released them from their duty of confidentiality.
The service providers working in the reception center and/or the relevant authorities are the data controllers under data protection law. This means that they are responsible for all rights and obligations arising from the GDPR in connection with the collection, processing and storage of personal data in connection with healthcare. As the provider of the Ref.Care software, Heidelberg University Hospital is responsible for ensuring that data processing within the Ref.Care software complies with data protection regulations.
For research and surveillance purposes, anonymized results of local evaluations (surveillance) can be exported in encrypted form to Heidelberg University Hospital to be analyzed across institutions and then summarized for regional reporting.