- Interoperability (community care)
Click here to read about our current indigenous health project in regional Queensland.
- Real-time interoperability (acute care)
EpiSoft personnel recently managed a project to replace a range of HL7 and proprietary point to point interfaces with message routing through a market leading interface engine
(MS BizTalk 2010 Enterprise edition) on behalf of a large private hospital client. This project was undertaken in preparation for an increasing number of clinical systems
being deployed in various departments in the hospital requiring a wider range of real-time clinical interfaces as well as the more established demographic,
order entry and results reporting messages being transacted previously. MS BizTalk has been implemented on a fully redundant virtualised environment and is broadcasting a range of
HL7 and other message types with over 6,000,000 transactions per year and climbing. BizTalk is providing technical support staff with immediate notification of source or destination system interface failure,
is managing transaction queuing using first-in-first-out principles and supports the resending of failed messages direct from the interface environment if required.
The project has involved both migration of existing interfaces and scoping the requirements and testing of new interfaces to and from a number of clinical and other systems implemented during
the course of the project. As well as the standard range of ADT and lab results interfaces, BizTalk is also integrated to the hosptial's guest WiFi for creation of patient accounts based on ADT trigger events,
and the hospitals ICU and coronary care system for patient flow, diagnostic results and export of clinical reports.
The integration envrionment is critical to patient flow and patient safety in an increasing number of areas so exhaustive clinical and administrative scenario testing is
conducted prior to a new clinical system and interface going live.
The project involved undertaking a comprehensive technical proof of concept and technical review of the product to ensure it met the needs of our
client in terms of supporting a wide range of interfaces using different messaging and transport protocols at sub-second performance.
- Implementation of WiFi access for hospital visitors
EpiSoft personnel were involved in managing a project to roll-out Internet access to hospital patients and other visitors to a leading private hospital.
The hospital is using a third party application to manage Internet access. Patients are provided their user account credentials via SMS to their mobile phone or the phone number
of a relative. The WiFi account then remains active for the duration of their stay. These automated account creation flows were
implemented using existing ADT transactions triggering account activation via the hospital's interface engine. Nurses can activate the WiFi account for requesting patients
through the order entry system and two clicks of the mouse. This system has been implemented throughout the hospital for all inpatients and some outpatient departments.
Patients, their guests and staff all report high levels of satisfaction with the ease of access.
- Chronic disease management system
EpiSoft personnel were involved with the redesign of a chronic disease management program (incorporating people, process and technology) into a more streamlined program
that resulted in $300K per annum savings and a system that is now the flagship disease management program for a major pharmaceutical company. It involves the health management
and de-identified data collection of 30,000 patients per annum from 1,500 GPs and has expanded into Asia.
- Business intelligence solution for the pharmaceutical sector
EpiSoft personnel were involved in a project to merge disparate datasets comprising approximately 60,000 records to analyse detailed sales patterns
of a market leading statin after patent expirty. Datasets were merged using fuzzy logic and migration into a Geographical Information System to analyse
sales by geographic region. The resulting analysis led to business decisions that saved our pharmaceutical client $12 million p.a. in potential market erosion.
- Medication reminder system
EpiSoft personnel were involved in the design and early stage project management of a reminder system linking a market leading client-server
pharmacy dispensing system with an online patient portal for the viewing of their medication records. The system included automated
reminders for prescription refill for medications for chronic disease.
- Operating theatre system automation (acute care)
EpiSoft personnel managed a project to fully automate the theatre booking process in a leading private hospital.
Changes to the theatre booking system included introduction of a calendar view of all twelve operating theatres, radiology procedure rooms, endoscopy rooms and cardiac catheter labs; a
single click view of OT and procedure room utilisation at any given time and a fast search process to identify available time for ad hoc theatre sessions.
Workload halved for some personnel in the bookings department and theatre managers have optimal visibility of session utilisation that is now being used to maximise
use of resources.
EpiSoft personnel are now engaged in a new project to implement full clinical documentation in OT.
- Operating theatre time algorithm automation (acute care)
EpiSoft personnel managed a project to use historical datasets from the theatre system (>40,000 procedures) to feed a statistical regression model to determine
factors affecting time in operating theatre. This involved a range of data transformations to prepare the data extract for analysis in SPSS. Working with a
university-based statistician, the resulting statistical modelling identified two highly significant indicators that had not been part of the theatre time
calculation algorithm that have subsequently been introduced to the algorithm to significantly improve predictive ability. This is a learning algorithm with
iterative updates to the theatre time estimates as surgeons perform the procedures.
- Sterile processing system uprade
EpiSoft personnel managed a major upgrade to a hospital's Sterile Processing Department software. This project required extensive co-ordination of vendor
and IS Department technical support personnel to roll-out the new software and supporting hardware (barcode scanners and label printers) in a very narrow (30 minute)
window that was available for system downtime.
- Hospital pre-admission process improvement
EpiSoft personnel co-ordinated a cross-functional team involving almost every department of a leading private hospital to rationalise a plethora of communications
booklets and pre-admission forms into a single comprehensive booklet for almost all patient types. The program of work also involved
changing the booking process in doctors' rooms to obtain better quality information in advance of admission, widespread changes to the scheduling and PAS systems in the
hospital to take account of current information needs and alignment with new forms, and introduction of an automated scheduling system for the hospital's pre-admission clinic.
This project was recognised at the annual hospital quality awards evening during 2008 as a winner in the multi-department category.
Click here to view a published article on this project as presented at MedInfo 2007.
- IM/IT toolset development for Divisions of General Practice
EpiSoft personnel worked as a sub-contractor to a leading ICT consulting firm contracted by the Commonwealth Department of Health & Aging to develop
a suite of information tools for Divisions of General Practice. EpiSoft personnel developed a numuber of the tools that have subsequently been published
for use by Divisions of General Practice.
- VMO on-call rostering (acute care)
EpiSoft personnel, in collaboration with a leading private hospital's Anaesthetist Section, worked with an external vendor to establish a self-managed
online roster for emergency on-call anaesthetists. The system includes email and SMS reminders for on-call roster duty.
It has subsequently been rolled out to all other specialist rosters in the hospital and enhancements to core functionality were delivered in
May 2009 to enable to support swap requests between participating doctors and SMS broadcasts to fill gaps in specialist rosters.
- Infrastructure replacement (acute care)
We have managed a range of projects to replace a number of core network and communications infrastructure components in a leading private hospital including the hospital's mission
critical fax gateway, a campus wide wireless network for use by patients, and software to support low cost, high volume printing to reduce administrative overheads.
- Risk analysis for leading health ICT vendor
EpiSoft was engaged to undertake a risk analysis for a leading health ICT vendor's with a focus on their market leading product. The risk analysis covered
commercial, technical, intellectual property and personnel associated risks. The resulting risk matrix assisted the vendor to determine key approaches and
priority setting for a range of risk mitigation strategies.
- Online bookings for ambulance and patient transport
This project involved integrating the electronic booking system available from NSW Ambulance with internal hospital vehicle and ambulance booking processes to
optimise discharge of patients following their acute care episode.
- CRM System for GP Divisions
EpiSoft managed a project to implement an existing CRM system into a Division of General Practice.
