Western Canadian Customers Come Together at MEDITECH to Share I.T. Strategies
(7/17/2007)

With interoperability, data standardization, and government regulations continually at the forefront of our customers' minds—especially those in Canada—MEDITECH was extremely pleased to see our customer sites from Western Canada come together to brainstorm these important issues, and especially under MEDITECH's roof. A spirited and collaborative strategic initiatives meeting recently held at MEDITECH's Canton, MA. facility was attended by CIOs and other leaders from some of our large customer organizations in the region, including Fraser Health Authority (Surrey, BC), Interior Health Authority (Kelowna, BC), and Whitehorse General Hospital (Yukon).

"It's great to start the dialogue between MEDITECH, Fraser, Interior, and the Yukon," stated Mal Griffin, CIO at Interior Health Authority. "We've all had separate conversations regarding interoperability, but never all in one room before."

All openly shared perspectives on common challenges as the country continues to tackle major provincial and pan-Canadian initiatives. Many of these initiatives, spearheaded by Canada Health Infoway, are focused on transforming organizations through interoperable electronic health records and the sharing of relevant clinical information. In turn, several of MEDITECH's executives shared our latest technology offerings, such as our new 6.0 Release and our evolving chronic disease management solution, to help all our customers both in North America and abroad deliver better health services across the continuum.

Laying the Groundwork for Interoperability Success: One Customer's Experience
One example of a customer making enormous strides in bringing together numerous facilities is Fraser Health Authority. Doug Redwood, director of IM planning, presented an update on the organization's ongoing, massive convergence project known as medConnect. "This critical project involves developing a unilateral organization out of 12 acute care hospitals covering numerous communities throughout the Lower Mainland area of Vancouver. This is not an easy undertaking, especially since each original health region had a different level of HCIS implementation," explained Redwood.

As the project continues to move forward, rolling out several MEDITECH applications in a bundled approach across all the health authority's facilities—including a new state-of-the-art hospital and cancer center in Abbotsford—Fraser is examining the implementation strategies that will best move them forward. According to CIO Neil Currie, "MEDITECH provides so much more than just acute care solutions. Working with MEDITECH, we have expanded into the community health services arena, and we continue to explore strategies for further expanding the Electronic Health Record across the continuum of care. MEDITECH is a key strategic partner in our EHR mission."

Supporting Provincial and Territorial Transformation
MEDITECH was excited to unveil our latest solutions to help support our customers' regional and pan-Canadian efforts, and we enthusiastically heard customer feedback on our technology. EHR and Interoperability Initiatives Manager Barbara Hobbs and Interoperability Manager Phil Businger were on hand to discuss MEDITECH's EHR solutions within the context of Infoway's 2015, the project that outlines the vision for health I.T. in Canada. As standards and nomenclature are still being defined to help improve reporting to public health agencies and to push data out to domains and registries, MEDITECH is able to help organizations manage data relevant to patients in a health care information exchange environment.

"The MEDITECH system can serve as the enterprise master patient index (EMPI) for customers," said Businger. "Also, MEDITECH provides a variety of connectivity models, including centralized, decentralized, and hybrids."

Customers shared several common challenges in trying to achieve these interoperability models. Whitehorse General Hospital's Manager of Information Technology, Brian Pierson, pointed out, "Because interoperability standards and projects are moving targets, some organizations are being forced to jump in on projects long before their comfort level is there. Things need to stabilize before organizations can confidently participate."

Fueling the complexity of interoperability standards, Neil Currie added that "consent" is yet another issue to keep an eye on, as clients will want to be able to opt in and out of patient registries. "We're seeing this more and more as a common theme in the areas of public reporting and biosurveillance," he said.

According to Businger, "MEDITECH will support our customers with standard HL7 interfaces, especially as these standards are endorsed and adopted as 'accepted industry standards.' We also are utilizing the Integrating Healthcare Enterprise (IHE) profiles for medical summary exchange of information." In addition, as an active member of the HIMSS EHR Vendors' Association, "MEDITECH participates in the Standards and Interoperability Workgroup and has the opportunity to provide feedback on the emerging industry standards, thereby shaping the direction of standards development," said Hobbs.

Given the current state of standards, or lack thereof, and with all the issues Fraser has worked on throughout the medConnect project, Doug Redwood explained they have been successful in EMPI and Client Registry projects across the health authority, stating, "Having an integrated clinical information system with a single MPI facilitates the sharing of patient-specific information between care providers within Fraser Health."

Further Expanding Care Across the Continuum
How else is MEDITECH helping our Canadian and other customers achieve their goals, particularly in the non-acute care arena? Demonstrating MEDITECH's Public Health and Home Care solutions, we showcased many of the system features available in the Client/Server 5.6 Release. For example, our Care Manager component serves as the centralized desktop from which providers can access the long-term care (cradle to grave) record. A number of these new features are currently being rolled out in Alberta, within the Regional Shared Health Information Program (RSHIP) project, and have successfully been implemented in five out of seven regions so far. The other two regions are currently implementing it.

We rounded off the day with a discussion on chronic disease management, a major piece to closing the loop on providing care throughout the entire continuum. "We are looking to do more in this area, and Canada is a great place for this given their health care environment," said Sayed-Friel. "With the Electronic Health Record at the heart of the application, chronic disease management encompasses care across the continuum, including home care, Emergency Department visits, clinic visits, and stays within the acute care environment."

Sayed-Friel concluded the day's collaborative discussions by stating, "Both MEDITECH and our customers feel passionately about improving health care, and one way to do that is by better managing this critical mass of chronic disease patients who make up the majority of care being provided in global health care today."

 

MEDITECH
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