Orion Health Ltd, a leading provider of integration technology for the health care industry worldwide, has been appointed by Northern Ireland to pilot a new Electronic Care Record (ECR). The one year pilot phase will see hospitals and GP practices across two of the five Health and Social Care Trusts begin to share medical records and basic social care information using the Concerto Portal from Orion Health. Concerto Portal is a web-based clinical portal that provides a unified view of patient data sourced from many disparate information systems and databases across a healthcare organization.
Concerto Portal provides Clinicians with a unified view of patient information that enables them to make informed clinical decisions, saves time and reduces cost by eliminating the repeating of unnecessary tests and reducing errors resulting in improved patient care and safety. The pilot project will allow clinicians in Northern Ireland's acute and primary care services to access a summary of information collected during previous hospital and GP visits.
Orion Health's President for North America and EMEA, Paul Viskovich said, "Orion Health is delighted to be given the opportunity to implement the Concerto Portal in Northern Ireland. We have proven experience delivering easy-to-use healthcare solutions that improve patient care and clinical decision making and we are looking forward to bringing such improvements to Northern Ireland."
Concerto Portal will deliver many benefits to clinical practice including improved availability of information at the point of care and consequentially a reduction in unnecessary diagnostic testing. Information will be aggregated in real time from more than ten systems, including Patient Administration Systems (PAS), Laboratory, Radiology, A&E, GP and the Health and Care Index. Information typically held on a patient record includes referrals, details of hospital and clinic visits, laboratory results, radiology reports, allergies, prescribed drugs and social care information. Use of the system and access to information within the patient's record will be strictly controlled, audited and monitored closely.
As well as providing benefits for patients and clinicians across the Belfast and South Eastern Trusts, it will also give the Northern Ireland project team a basis for evaluating the requirements for further development in deploying shared medical records.
Brian McKeown, head of ICT planning, commissioning and performance management with the Health and Social Care Board for Northern Ireland, said: "The development of region-wide electronic health records has been a policy objective in Northern Ireland since 2005. We visited similar Orion Health integration projects in Canada before procuring this pilot and we learnt that it was essential for the project to be driven by doctors."
Orion Heath will install Concerto Portal for clinicians in Belfast City Hospital, Ulster Hospital, as well as at the designated GP practices. The first users are expected to go live in December with all identified interfaces up and running by end of March 2010. Concerto Portal will be used in secondary care, unscheduled care and particularly for those with chronic conditions.
Related news articles:
- Orion Health's Profile
About Concerto Portal
A single, web based sign-on clinical portal, Concerto Portal connects multiple health information systems to provide a unified view of patient data across a department, facility, region or even a nation. Through its user-friendly graphical interface, Concerto Portal allows clinicians to present data to patients in order to better explain, inform and share health records securely and reliably. Improved access to information allows staff to make better clinical decisions leading to improved healthcare and better health outcomes.
About Orion Health Ltd.
Orion Health's easy-to-use solutions improve patient care and clinical decision-making by providing clinicians with integrated health records in a patient-centric view. By enhancing existing healthcare information systems, the Orion Health Concerto Portal, Rhapsody Integration Engine and other clinical workflow solutions within the Clinical Integration Framework enable rapid integration to support real-time electronic information exchange between systems that traditionally could not share data. By streamlining information transfer, Orion Health delivers numerous benefits such as fewer diagnostic test orders, shorter waiting times and safer clinical decision making.
Worldwide, Orion Health solutions have been implemented in health information communities involving over 35 million patients with tens of thousands of active users. Orion Health's partners include leading health system integrators and IT vendors such as Accenture, IBM, LogicaCMG, Fujitsu, Oracle Corporation, Initiate and others. Orion Health has more than 1,000 clients around the world, including the NHS Greater Glasgow & Clyde, Alberta Health Services, New South Wales Health, University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) Medical Center, Maine HealthInfoNet, New Zealand Ministry of Health and US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). More information can be found at www.orionhealth.com.