In 2015, NPC & CPPCC (Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference), nationwide medical insurance internetwork has been one of the hot topics.In terms of pure informatization, the premise of achieving nationwide medical insurance internetwork is to build a national information system for medical insurance.Though this internetwork will not be accomplished overnight, it's recommended that the involved information system should be built based on the available cities' experience.
Brief analysis of medical insurance calculation
Medical insurance calculation is realized when hospitals or pharmacies log in to the social security online service system, and process services in real time.Specifically, the insured swipe social security smartcards in machines at hospitals or pharmacies. Then, the hospitals or pharmacies log in to the social security system, verify the smartcard information, and make medical insurance calculation.
The above process seems to be simple, but it still faces the following issues:First, the access security issue, that is, how to verify the accounts trying to access hospitals or pharmacies, and how to encrypt data to avoid malicious operations. Second, the user experience issue, that is, how to ensure that each hospital or pharmacy can handle services steadily and efficiently, since there might be thousands of citizens at tens of or hundreds of hospitals or pharmacies in one place need to make insurance calculation.
Social security information system built in Luoyang city
Take the social security information system of Luoyang as an example.This city has over 1 million insured citizens, and about 840 designated hospitals and pharmacies. To ensure secure access for these hospitals and pharmacies, the information center under Luoyang's ministry of human resources and social security adopts SANGFOR's SSL VPN solution.In that case, before logging in to the social security information system, each hospital or pharmacy needs to pass the identity authentication with the designated key. Besides, the data will be encrypted in the whole process from stealing.
During rush hours, the city's hospitals and pharmacies might need to log in to the information system simultaneously, especially when the insured swipe their social security smartcards, imposing great pressures to the system. Early Luoyang's information center adopts the JAVAEE-based Weblogic software to control load in the application system.After some time, it's found that the Weblogic software has poor stability performance and insufficient functions, which sometimes cause resource scheduling failures or system overloading.
According to Director Wang in Luoyang's information center, "Before the deployment of SANGFOR's AD hardware loading, many pharmacies complain of the slow access to the social security system. However, after the new deployment, they can enter into the system in 2-3 seconds even during rush hours."Contrast to software loading, SANGFOR's AD solution makes no changes to the network architecture, and moreover, provides stable performance and comprehensive functions.
After the introduction of SANGFOR's AD, Luoyang's social security information system can be accessed quickly, and the server reliability is also improved.It's because SANGFOR's AD provides multiple health check mechanisms in addition to the efficient load balancing mechanism.For SANGFOR's AD, the Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) values which are generated during system interaction will be captured, and used for determining whether the applications are normal. In the case of any abnormalities, administrators will be informed timely by emails or SMS, which helps to avoid losses caused by service failures.
"After the deployment of hardware loading, I once checked the servers in rush hours, and found that they were in a balanced state, and free from any breakdowns," said by Director Wang.
Luoyang is the first pilot city in Henan province which integrates the pension insurance, medical insurance, work-related injury insurance, maternity insurance, and unemployment insurance into one program. The information center of Luoyang's ministry of human resources and social security, with the help of SANGFOR's SSL VPN solution, has shared its social security system with 15 cities, including Beijing and Shanghai, etc. In this way, about 100,000 retirees who once worked in Luoyang during the first 5-year plan can handle social security affairs online when they come back to their hometowns.
