Dean Koh

The technology is being piloted at six NSW Health public hospitals in a range of clinical settings including hospital EDs, wards, clinics and pathology collection centres.

The app is the first locally developed solution of its type to offer full access to EMR data.

In the next three years, Selena+, a system which analyzes retinal photographs across the nation for diabetes screening will be deployed.

InterSystems today announced that it has signed an agreement for strategic cooperation with Inspur, a Chinese cloud computing and big data service provider. Inspur will implement its healthcare big data platform using the InterSystems IRIS for Health data platform, and the companies will jointly promote the innovation and application of healthcare big data platforms, accelerate the sharing of healthcare big data and integrate artificial intelligence (AI) technology. Inspur is one of the few enterprises that construct and operate healthcare big data platforms in China. Its healthcare big data platforms support unified management of health data, as well as data sharing among organisations based on data and safety standards, and quality control, which is critical to unlocking its full value. WHAT’S IT ABOUT Inspur will implement InterSystems IRIS as a high-performance data platform providing data lifecycle management, interoperability, transaction processing and analytics. It will take advantage of IRIS for Health’s prebuilt models for data transformation and native support for FHIR, allowing different health data platforms to rapidly ingest, normalise and share information for consistent insight into large amounts of health data.  “InterSystems IRIS also provides an open environment, supporting a wide range of customer environments and application requirements,” said Chuangui Gao, vice president of Inspur Group. Earlier in February, both companies undertook research and pilot projects for big data platform technologies using the InterSystems HealthShare Health Connect integration platform and IRIS for Health. The goal is to utilise world leading technologies and experience to further develop them, and to incorporate international medical data standards and innovation in accordance with Chinese security frameworks and safety standards for application solutions. ON THE RECORD “We are delighted to work with Inspur to boost Chinese healthcare innovation and development, and the application of healthcare big data platforms,” said Luciano Brustia, regional managing director of Asia Pacific at InterSystems, in a statement.  “InterSystems values the Chinese market and has partnered with organizations here for more than 20 years. The Chinese economy continues to grow rapidly, the standard of living continues to improve, and the demand for healthcare services continues to increase, leading to unprecedented growth in the healthcare industry.” Chuangui Gao, vice president of Inspur Group, said: “We are excited to enter into an agreement for strategic cooperation with InterSystems. InterSystems’ advanced technologies empower healthcare organisations and regional health management systems worldwide to innovate and transform by enabling fast systems development and deployment, as well as data interoperability."

This second article in a series of three articles (check out the first article on the Data track here) focusing on the breakout tracks at the upcoming HIMSS Australia Digital Health Summit (ADHS) will touch on innovation. The term “innovation” is trendy at major health conferences and events, but what does it really mean in the context of health systems and, specifically, at hospitals and healthcare organisations?  Innovation could be seen as a method in achieving greater efficiencies and lowering costs while still delivering a high quality of care. According to an op-ed titled Digital Health Innovation: Addressing the two-canoe problem, author Paddy Padmanabhan said that technology-led innovation is no longer an option but a necessity for health systems trying to break out of the downward spiral of competing on quality and price.  Why innovate One of the biggest challenges and problems in innovation in healthcare is that of too many pilots that end up nowhere  – “innovation” projects get started but these are often done in a piecemeal manner or only focus on the short term. Eventually, these “pilots” die a slow death – either through burning out resources or simply not producing substantial outcomes.  Innovation needs to be part of sustainable long-term strategy and as Padmanabhan explains, some health systems are already developing their innovation models to encourage internal innovation and also tap into external innovation. At the ADHS event, Dr. Zoran Bolevich, chief executive of eHealth NSW, together with Dr. Manish Kohli, managing director of Beyond Horizon Health and co-founder and partner of Infinite Care Holdings, will address this exact topic at the panel session Why Innovate, sharing both Australian and international perspectives. The panel is moderated by Justin Gernot, vice president of Healthbox.  Success stories on innovation Dr. Clair Sullivan, chief digital health officer for Metro North Hospital and Health Service located in Brisbane, Australia, will be sharing examples of success stories of innovation projects at her organisation at her session Change is our new normal: navigation innovation and change in health at the ADHS event.  Registration for the ADHS event is open and more details can be found here.

With the explosion in the amount of healthcare data being collected, one of the key challenges lie in the quality of data, as well as making the right decisions to use the appropriate data to measure specific health outcomes or predictions.

A recent InterSystems survey found that although only 16% of respondents stated that today’s digital systems currently support value-based care initiatives, 64% of them expect this capability in the next five years.

There will be three sub tracks at the Summit: Data, Innovation and Empowering Patient.

Officially announced at the HIMSS AsiaPac Awards last week during the HIMSS AsiaPac 19 conference, Princ Paknampo Hospital made history by becoming the first hospital in Thailand to achieve the HIMSS Analytics Electronic Medical Record Adoption Model (EMRAM) Stage 7 validation. The EMRAM was developed in 2005 with the first Stage 7 EMRAM achieved in 2008. There are eight stages (0– 7) that measure a hospital's implementation and utilisation of information technology applications. Tracking their progress in completing eight stages (0 – 7), hospitals can review the implementation and utilisation of information technology applications with the intent of reaching Stage 7, which represents an advanced electronic patient record environment. Princ Paknampo Hospital is a 100-bed hospital based in Nakhon Sawan, well outside the capital city of Bangkok. Upon full implementation of the EMR, Princ Paknampo was able to leverage a number of technological applications to improve patient care and safety. Princ Paknampo implemented a full Clinical Decision Support (CDS) alert and order set for early detection of septic shock, and enacted guidelines to monitor for patient care against their set of standards.  With an advanced analytics monitoring system, the hospital is able to get real time data on specific sepsis related indicators – to better monitor, and reduce, the instances of sepsis. The hospital’s mortality rate, length of stay and costs from sepsis-related treatments have all significantly decreased as a result. According to Hal Wolf, President and CEO of HIMSS, this designation represents the first time any hospital in Thailand has reached this advanced stage of digital healthcare and could lead to significant improvements in patient care in the country, and the region. Princ Paknampo Hospital was the first hospital in Thailand to achieve Stage 6 on the EMRAM in 2016. “Ensuring patient care is of the highest quality possible is the ultimate impact of the electronic medical record system, said Wolf. We at HIMSS are proud of Princ Paknampo Hospital for its commitment to patient health, and congratulate them on reaching the ultimate level of advancement in their electronic health record implementation journey, and also for becoming the first Stage 7 organisation in Thailand.” “The hospital has realised a 97 percent reduction in pre-dispensing errors during the closed-loop medication administration process, a substantial reduction in sepsis cases, and an increase in diabetes protocol compliance. This hospital will serve as a beacon for other hospitals across Thailand and throughout Asia,” added Wolf.

Traditionally, value in healthcare has been viewed from the perspectives of hospitals and healthcare providers, but this has shifted to the patient-consumer.