Dublin's Temple Street Children's University Hospital (TSCUH) has gone live with Orion Health's Clinical Portal as part of a major ICT transformation that is in accordance with the country's eHealth strategy. For the first time, clinicians can access patient data from a range of critical sources including patient administration system, lab system, radiology, theatre and the emergency department, in a single place, helping them have more time to care for the thousands of children they treat every year. TSCUH intends to make 80% of its paper patient record electronic with Orion Health's technology.
"Clinicians were frustrated at having to negotiate multiple systems to access all the clinical information they need," said David Wall, Head of ICT at TSCUH. "Now they have a single unified view of patient data across the hospital, accessible through an easy-to-use web-based interface. Graphs, alerts, appointments, lab results, X-rays, radiology tests and theatre activity are available at the touch of a button," said Wall. "That's having an immediate positive impact on patient care."
Consultant neurosurgeon and chair of the TSCUH Medical Board, John Caird hailed the Portal as "a great advance". Other staff echoed these sentiments. "The Clinical Portal keeps all the data on one system," said Noelle O'Mahony, neurosurgery Clinical Nurse Specialist. "It really helps me in my role and makes me more efficient."
Consultant endocrinologist Dr Nuala Murphy finds the system useful and intuitive. "I love the encounters view, it's much faster and easier than PAS [Patient Administration System]," she said. "I'm looking forward to the remaining phases."
Initially in use within neurosurgery and endocrinology departments, the Portal will be rolled out across the hospital in 2015. This is part of a two year, phased-in ICT programme of work with Orion Health that will help transform TSCUH to a paper-light organisation. "The portal is only the start of our journey," said Dairin Hines, clinical informatics manager at TSCUH.
The phased deployment will provide data for clinical audit and research purposes, as well as leverage technology for decision support. Phase two will increase the level of information available, whilst also allowing for data entry via the Portal and the provision of discharge summaries. Phase three will extend functionality to clinical workflow and shared worklists; and phase four will see the roll out of full order communications and notifications.
Colin Henderson, managing director, UK & Ireland at Orion Health, recognised that meeting clinical needs is central to good digital health. "Our Portal been developed by clinicians for clinicians and we look forward to supporting TSCUH and others on this journey."
"We looked at several suppliers, and were impressed with Orion Health's previous deployments, such as the work in Northern Ireland, where Orion Health Portal supports the award-winning Northern Ireland Electronic Health Record," continued TSCUH's Wall. "Orion Health offered a very flexible product with a very good toolset, which we felt fitted our needs exactly," he added.
TSCUH's ICT programme is in the spirit of the Republic of Ireland's eHealth strategy. This sees technology as an enabler for increased clinical time with patients, as well as a tool to release high quality data that can inform service planning. The Orion Health solution delivers on all these fronts.
Related news articles:
- Orion Health's Profile
About Temple Street Children's University Hospital
Temple Street, founded in 1872 is an acute paediatric hospital serving some of Ireland's sickest children and providing a referral and care service on both a regional and national basis. Seven major specialities at Temple Street today include neonatal and paediatric surgery, neurology, neurosurgery, nephrology, orthopaedics, ENT and plastic surgery. The Hospital is also the national centre for paediatric ophthalmology, the national craniofacial centre, the national airway management centre, the national meninogococal laboratory, the national centre for inherited metabolic disorders and the national screening centre. Temple Street cares for 145,000 children per year. Over 45,000 of these children attend the Emergency Department every year making it one of the busiest in Europe. A staff of 85 Consultants and over 950 other full time and part time nursing, paramedical and other staff deliver care.
About Orion Health Ltd
Orion Health is a leading population health management company and is one of the world’s leading providers of electronic health records (EHRs) and healthcare integration solutions to healthcare organisations. Worldwide, Orion Health solutions are used in 30 countries by more than 300,000 clinicians and used by organisations throughout the National Health Service in England and Health and Social Care Northern Ireland, as well as Scotland's NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde.