“It
will be an end-to-end computerisation of the hospital, from registration to
doctors' desk, bed management, lab requests to pharmacy......We bought in
because we realise that hospital systems, especially patient records, were a
high priority and requirement”
Chairman and CEO of
Advanced Integrated Systems, Douglas Halsall, on their US$1 million deployment
of Suvarna platform at UHWI
UHWI
(University Hospital of the West Indies) is finally stepping into the 21st
Century as they'd promised in May 2016 in the article “UHWI
going fully digital by year end”, published Tuesday, May 31, 2016 by
Balford Henry, The Jamaica Observer.
They've
decided to digitize their medical records with a new Digital hospital
management system.
The
project is being handled by AIS (Advanced Integrated Systems) and India-based
Suvarna to the tune of US$1 million as reported in the article “University
Hospital Of The West Indies Goes Digital”, published Wednesday April 27,
2016 by Tameka Gordon, The Jamaica Gleaner.
UHWI's US$1 million will give them a license to use Suvarna platform while AIS will implement the system, apply upgrades when necessary as well as deal with the conversion of the paper based records into Digital records.
This
is possible thanks to AIS buying an equity stake in Suvarna back in 2011.
Suvarna, whose software is deployed in over 600 hospitals and 700 laboratories
globally, specializes in hospital systems that are fully computerised and
paperless.
AIS
has already pitched their hospital management software to the GOJ (Government
of Jamaica) to digitize the records of their 25 hospitals and 300 clinics as
reported in the article “AIS
Mulls National Roll Out Of Hospital Records Project”, Published Wednesday
June 22, 2016 by Tameka Gordon, The
Jamaica Gleaner.
AIS
has also begun marketing it to other Caribbean and Central America countries.
This would potentially make patient transfers a breeze, as currently such
records would have to be written out by hand and digitized into the new
hospital management system.
This
Caribbean and Central America push is being backed by Financial Transaction
Processors Limited, based in St Lucia. So how is to be done by the end of 2016?
UHWI's Digital hospital
management system from AIS and Suvarna - GOJ can benefit from Paperless with
GOVNet
UHWI
seems to have gotten quite a deal with this hospital management system; rather
than purchase and own a software platform, they've allowed AIS and Suvarna to
do all the heavy lifting for them.
Newer information is being digitized and updated, with the older paper based information being digitized over time to quote Chairman and CEO of Advanced Integrated Systems, Douglas Halsall: “The idea is not to take all their millions of records and data enter all those before we start. We will have a cut-off date and we will take all the records as of that date, and those will be paperless going forward”.
The
hospital management system, which will be installed in clinics on UWI's campus,
will be accessible by doctors on smartphones and tablets and may go islandwide.
It'll also facilitate inventory control in the pharmacy and facilitate patient
transfers to quote UWI Principal and Pro Vice-Chancellor Professor Archibald
McDonald: “A big problem in pharmacies is that drugs expire on us. So the
system will be able to track that and send an alert when medications are about
to expire. So that is a lot of savings, again”.
Professor Archibald McDonald gave an example of how this fully mobile hospital management system would make a difference, quote: “Let us take X-ray, for example. When a patient goes to the X-ray department, there will be no more need for films, as a digital image will be transferred to the ward so a doctor can just turn on his computer and look at the image. There is a lot of savings from that because X-ray films are very expensive. The doctor has a smartphone. He will punch in the patient's number and get the results on his smartphone”.
So
will this end the long waits due to hospital records being lost due to their
careless storage as revealed in an investigation back in 2012 in the article “Careless!”
published Sunday April 15, 2012, by Tyrone Reid, The Jamaica Gleaner?
Undercover
Investigators from the Gleaner posing as visitors were able to expose the lax
level of security at the UHWI and KPH (Kingston Public Hospital). However, this
may no longer be possible, as with this new hospital management system, there
will be no more paper dockets to handle, to quote Professor Archibald McDonald:
“There will be no more long waits as clerks search for dockets, and there will
be no more lost dockets”.
Going
paperless thanks to GOVNet is in the works as Barbados has already beaten us
with their Government Wide Area Network built by Digicel as noted in my blog
article entitled “Digicel
to build Barbados Government Wide Area Network while rolling out Digicel Play”.
With
the potential cost savings from going paperless as well as added security, it's
hoped that the GOJ will follow suit with their other Public Hospitals. UHWI's
Digital hospital management system from AIS and Suvarna, by year end, will
demonstrate that it is indeed possible to go paperless in a large organization.
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