ARMONK, NY – Capella Healthcare, the Memorial Hermann Hospital System, Trillium Health Centre and Vanderbilt University Medical Center are all turning to smart technology for their electronic medical records.
Hospital officials are using IBM to integrate and access new intelligence to improve their EMRs. IBM's open technology provides real-time access to clinical and business information spanning multiple systems, as well as sources of information like digital imaging and laboratory results.
"Now is an important time for industry leaders to step up and contribute to healthcare reform and transformation. To accelerate achievement of such goals, IBM is teaming with our many business partners, alliances and key clients to drive the creation of integrated delivery systems, including electronic medical records, that help the worldwide healthcare system become more interconnected, instrumented and intelligent," said Dan Pelino, general manager of IBM's Healthcare & Life Sciences Industry. "In this regard, the enablement of EMRs as envisioned by the Obama Administration will help to link diagnosis, drug discovery and healthcare delivery systems to insurers, employers, communities and patients themselves."
The Houston, Texas-based Memorial Hermann Hospital System adopted IBM software and services in concert with IBM Business Partner CGI's Sovera solution to provide 24/7 Web-based access to patient financial information. Hospital officials said they realized more than $1.2 million in operational cost savings in 20 months of use.
Mineral Area Regional Medical Center, one of 14 of Franklin, Tenn.–based Capella Healthcare hospitals, is using IBM and IBM Business Partner BlueWare's Wellness Connection offerings to share digitized information for all outpatient services, including laboratory services, electrocardiograms (EKGs) and diagnostic imaging, as well as physician and nursing notes.
Trillium Health Centre, one of Canada's largest hospitals, is using IBM business intelligence to provide real-time insight into patient length of stay, patient safety, service accessibility, staff retention and budgets. Hospital officials say staff can now link the key performance indicators that impact one another to identify potential problems and show process gaps. They can also map into external databases from the Canadian Institute of Health Informatics and the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care to benchmark their performance.
Nashville, Tenn.-based Vanderbilt University Medical Center is using IBM technology, built on ILOG, for the organization's new alerts and notifications system, through which Vanderbilt doctors are automatically informed when lab results indicate a critical situation.
