UHWI's US$1 million Hospital Management System from AIS and Suvarna proves Paperless Workplace is possible

“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.