ITAC 2015: HealthConnex extends telemonitoring app for MyCareManager

Telstra Health’s subsidiary HealthConnex is working on an iOS version of the new telemonitoring app it has built for the Android-based devices used with its MyCareManager integrated telehealth solution, allowing care providers to create tasks to prompt clients at home to take their medications, do their vital signs measurements, or even feed the dog or put the bins out.

HealthConnex’s clinical lead for MyCareManager Carol Towers told the ITAC conference on the Gold Coast today that the app, which works in conjunction with the MyCareManager provider portal, also allows alerts to be sent to the care provider’s triage dashboard if the client hasn’t responded to the prompts or their observation target ranges are out of the ordinary.

HealthConnex launched the MyCareManager home telehealth platform back in April. It has both consumer and provider portals, WebRTC-based video conferencing capability, plug-and-play Bluetooth-enabled telemonitoring capability and an integration engine powered by the FHIR interoperability standard, which allows it to integrate with third-party client management systems.

HealthConnex has been rolling out the solution to a number of large home care and visiting nurse providers such as Silver Chain and RDNS, where Ms Towers, a former nurse, led several high-profile home telehealth trials. Silver Chain worked with HealthConnex to develop a FHIR interface with its ComCare client and clinical management solution to enable a single client record for its Hospital in the Home services.

(Parent company Telstra Health recently entered into an agreement to purchase Silver Chain’s IT arm EOS Technologies, which develops the ComCare software solution.)

MyCareManager also allows community care organisations to provide monthly details of budgets and services that are now required under the consumer-directed care (CDC) provisions of the new Commonwealth Home Support Program (CHSP).

Asked if it integrated with business process software such as CRM solutions or those for finance, rostering or payroll, MyCareManager BDM Lauren Harding said the integration was with core client management systems that have their own interfaces with finance and payroll software.

“What we are doing is pushing relevant information from that client management system up to the portal, and the interfacing methodology that we use is FHIR,” Ms Harding said.

“If any organisation has a requirement to push information from a CRM or finance system or payroll, where they are not integrated with the core client management system, we can do that, or the organisation or the vendor can do that, using the FHIR standard.”

FHIR allows data to be extracted from the client management system and sent up to MyCareManager portal, but also for information to be fed back into the client system, she said.

As the MyCareManager platform has been designed to be easily configurable by the service provider, they can choose and configure what task prompts they want for each client, which is then sent through to the mobile application.

“They will then pop up as a reminder on the mobile device,” Ms Towers said. “There are different sounds for different reminders like medications. In the background it creates an alerting function too so when clients’ observations are outside their normal levels, we will get an alert in our triage dashboard to be able to identify it.”

Alerts can also be sent to the triage dashboard if the client hasn’t acknowledged the prompt by touching the screen, and care providers can configure the target ranges for observations so that what would be considered out of the normal range for most people are set as normal for the individual client.

The app also contains an overview with past history and colour-coded graphs and tables, so by pressing on the app, clients can check out what their last reading was.

Ms Towers said HealthConnex was continuing to further develop the platform’s capabilities. RDNS is now using it for its remote medication management service as it allows nurses to directly call the client through the device, and there is further work in how it can be used to deliver remote wound management, stomal therapy and diabetes stabilisation and education programs.

ITAC 2015: Hills launches Care@Home home monitoring system

Hills Health Solutions has launched a new home monitoring system for older people that can track deviations from daily routines and potentially prevent adverse incidents, and is also now offering the world first silicon-based arthritis pendant it has developed for people with low manual dexterity to both the hospital and aged care sectors.

Hills signed an agreement with Israeli M2M firm Essence earlier this year for the Care@Home platform, which is able to monitor and intelligently analyse the daily habits and routines of older people living at home and predict and even prevent incidents before they are likely to occur.

The Adelaide-headquartered company has dropped the Lively range of home sensors from its distribution list and is instead offering Care@Home, as well as investing more in low frequency and wireless systems such as its Sonitor range of falls sensors and wearable pendants and wrist tags that feature dynamic location finding and long battery life.

Head of Hills Health Solutions Tom Sykes said Care@Home was unlike other devices in the medical alarm market that predominantly provide an emergency response rather than preventing the emergency.

“Based on customer feedback we turned the model around and decided to launch a solution that make intelligent decisions based on changes in a resident’s daily routines,” Mr Sykes said.

Launching the new range at the Information Technology in Aged Care (ITAC) conference on the Gold Coast today, Mr Sykes said Hills saw Care@Home as a significant improvement over traditional personal emergency response alarms and an opportunity to tailor care services based on a resident’s individual needs.

The platform uses sensors and advanced analytics to learn the daily habits and routines of older people and then generates alerts if deviations occur that could indicate a change in health conditions.

Care@Home connects with monitoring centres, care providers and families and notifies all parties of changes such as skipping meals, disrupted sleep or reduced mobility around the home.

Mr Sykes said Care@Home was NBN ready but does not need a internet connection as it can work off a 3G SIM card. The range also features an alarm that the resident can press that will enable two-way communication with monitoring centres.

Hills also displayed the Hills Arthritis Pendant it has developed at its Innovation Centre in Adelaide in association with University of South Australia industrial designers Robert White, Daniel Weiss, Peter Schumacher and Sandy Walker, which recently won a Design Industry of Australia award.

Featuring a translucent silicone bulb that people with arthritis or low dexterity need only gently squeeze rather than have to push a button, the arthritis pendant also uses LED lights within the silicone bulb that change colour when the pendant is activated, meaning the resident or patient can see that they’ve successfully triggered a nurse call.

Mr Sykes said the arthritis pendant has been designed to work with all third-party nurse call systems like Austco, not just Hills’ own brands such as Questek.

UTS set to shine in digital health and analytics

The University of Technology Sydney (UTS) is gearing up for the first intake of students in its new Bachelor of Health Science degree, which includes what is thought to be Australia’s first major in digital health and analytics.

Offered for the first time at UTS in 2016, the degree seeks to combine an understanding of the humanistic side of healthcare with science through the use of data and technology. It will also offer majors in pharmacology and global health.

The course as a whole will have an emphasis on understanding data and where it comes from – including a subject called Arguments, Evidence and Intuition, which aims to teach critical thinking about data and its sources – as well as foundational knowledge of health information management, health informatics and how to use and apply ICT to help solve problems and improve health and healthcare delivery.

And while digital health is about far more than how to design a cool health app, it will be tailored to real-life requirements with a professional placement undertaken in the third year.

The driving force behind the new major is Jen Bichel-Findlay, deputy director of UTS’s Centre for Health Services Management and its director of studies. Dr Bichel-Findlay said there is a large and growing demand for graduates skilled in the emerging field of digital health and health informatics.

“We’ll definitely be looking at social media and health, because that’s an area that health really has been slow to embrace, as well as bring your own devices, as well as apps, as well as personalised medicine and what can we do with all the data that people are collecting in the quantified self movement,” Dr Bichel-Findlay said.

“But they will also do a subject called Data Science in Healthcare that will introduce them to the basic concepts of data and an absolutely fabulous subject that we’re hoping all undergraduate courses will require in the future and that’s called Arguments, Evidence and Intuition.

“You have data, but data doesn’t always tell you the right thing. You have to be able to go beyond the data and try to figure out if it’s telling you the right thing, or is it telling you a range of things.

“It uses unique ways of teaching to get people to not just read a newspaper article about a study and think, ‘oh goodness, I have to stop eating meat because it’s bad’. We want them to start asking questions about how the study is done and what is it actually telling you.”

All students will receive a foundation in basic health subjects such as public health, primary healthcare, epidemiology, healthcare communication and indigenous health. Those doing the digital health and analytics major will also look at the foundations of health information management, which will cover what health information is, the different coding systems, the importance of records in healthcare and privacy.

Then in the third year, they will take two digital health subjects and two analytics subjects, Dr Bichel-Findlay said.

“With digital health, we will talk about health informatics and how different countries are approaching the move to digital,” she said. “The second subject is called Design and Evaluation in Digital Health and that will look primarily at how information systems are set up, how you design them and that will include social media and apps as well.

“On the analytics side, they have an introductory subject that’s called Health Analytics and that will expose them to the different ways they can manipulate data and analyse it and bring in big data methodology. And then the second subject is advanced and we’re hoping to procure some big data repositories that we can get the students to work on.”

She hopes students will also have access to the new UTS Data Arena that opened on the Broadway campus this year. Co-designed by feature film visual effects and animation expert Ben Simons, the facility provides a 3D sensory immersion in and visualisation of big data, turning numbers into pictures.

“It’s already proven to be so useful in terms of seeing things in data that you wouldn’t see if you just had a file with a whole lot of rows and columns and numbers,” Dr Bichel-Findlay said. “You can visualise all of your data from ceiling to floor in 3D and that’s where you pick things up.”

While the undergraduate degree does provide a path to postgraduate specialisation, it has been designed to make students job ready in the real world. Dr Bichel-Findlay said students should be able to find employment in the health informatics field once they’ve graduate from this course.

They will also be eligible to apply to study for the Certified Health Informatician Australia (CHIA) credential, with the degree covering all nine CHIA competencies. Graduates are expected to be ready to work in a broad range of areas in healthcare, from health promotion, education and advocacy to eHealth, health data and information management systems, planning and policy, project management and evaluation, and research and consultancy across both public and private health sectors.

With health informatics and digital health knowledge in increasing demand throughout the health system, Dr Bichel-Findlay is also developing a digital health major for all of UTS’s masters programs, including its master of public health, primary healthcare, health services management and advanced nursing degrees.

“All of our masters courses will have the option of a digital health major,” she said. “And I’m working with HIMAA and HISA and ACHI to develop these courses to make sure that they are reflective of the real-world skills that people need.”

While demand for health informatics skills is growing, many undergraduate courses in health informatics and health information management are actually disappearing from tertiary education facilities. And those universities that do teach data analytics and informatics generally tend to run their courses out of their IT faculties rather than health.

Dr Bichel-Findlay believes UTS is onto a winner with its new major as part of a health science degree. “Given that we’re UTS and technology is in the title of the university, we’re hoping that we can really shine in this area.”

Pictured above are Animal Logic’s Toby Grime (left) and UTS deputy vice chancellor Glenn Wightwick in the Data Arena. Photo: Joanne Saad.

Australasian health IT week in review: October 24

Pulse+IT’s weekly round-up of Australian and New Zealand health, IT and eHealth news:

Govt MP call for subsidy for regional diabetes technology
ABC News ~ Lucy Barbour ~ 23/10/2015

Families in regional Australia who have children with type 1 diabetes are pleading with the Federal Health Minister to subsidise life-saving technology.

Broken Hill hospital linked to high-speed medical network
ABC News ~ Declan Gooch ~ 23/10/2015

Broken Hill hospital is set to be connected to a high-speed health network that will allow faster access to electronic medical records.

No bungle’ over PCEHR rebrand, declares Govt
Australian Doctor ~ Serkan Ozturk ~ 22/10/2015

Only months after its high-profile rebranding of the PCEHR, the Federal Government is denying it has been involved in another “bureaucratic bungle” over its new name.

Government ‘attempting to rewrite history’ over electronic health records, says Labour
stuff.co.nz ~ Tom Pullar-Strecker ~ 22/10/2015

Government ‘attempting to rewrite history’ over electronic health records, says Labour

Melbourne start-up company Quanticare reinvents the walking frame to create high-tech tool
ABC News ~ Simon Leo Brown ~ 22/10/2015

A Melbourne start-up company has reinvented the walking frame, turning the simple mobility aid into a hi-tech diagnostic tool.

Sector briefing on ACAT transition to My Aged Care
Community Care Review ~ Staff writer ~ 22/10/2015

The Department of Social Services will host a live webinar for service providers and Aged Care Assessment Teams on the full transition of ACATs to My Aged Care.

Delays plague provider sign-up to My Aged Care
Australian Ageing Agenda ~ Darragh O’Keefe ~ 21/10/2015

Just 39 per cent of aged care providers are ready to receive referrals through the My Aged Care gateway, more than three months after it launched, latest figures show.

Think tank says ‘bundled payments’ could improve care and cut costs
Medical Observer ~ Julie Lambert ~ 21/10/2015

A ‘bundled payments’ system instead of fee-for-service could improve healthcare while addressing the spiralling costs of chronic and complex-needs patients, a leading public health think tank says.

Staff targeted in ‘inaccurate’ debate over Fiona Stanley Hospital, says Serco chief
ABC News ~ Andew O’Connor ~ 21/10/2015

Serco chief executive Mark Irwin has told a parliamentary inquiry that staff have been targeted as a result of “inaccurate” debate over problems at Fiona Stanley Hospital.

Grand plan to develop a single national electronic health record for Kiwis
NZ Doctor ~ Liane Topham-Kindley ~ 20/10/2015

A single national electronic health record system will be developed in New Zealand over the next three to five years.

Interoperability on FHIR as draft standard release two published

HL7 International has published release two of the Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) draft standard for trial use (DSTU), incorporating extensive changes from implementation partners including some of the biggest health IT vendors in the world.

First developed by Melbourne-based health informatician Grahame Grieve, FHIR is fast becoming the standard of choice for healthcare data interoperability, with vendors large and small beginning to implement its specifications and healthcare organisations and governments also paying close attention to its potential.

HL7 describes FHIR as a versatile, modern standard that can be applied to mobile devices, web-based applications, cloud communications and electronic health record data sharing. It uses the latest web standards and includes a RESTful application programming interface (API), which has been simplified in release two.

FHIR is already being adopted by software vendors, with Telstra Health subsidiary HealthConnex one of the first in the world to adopt FHIR to enable easier interoperability between its products and with other vendors’ software. Auckland-based, ASX-listed Orion Health is also using it in its Rhapsody integration engine.

Department of Health special adviser on eHealth Paul Madden told Pulse+IT recently that the government is also currently looking at whether FHIR can be used to to improve the national PCEHR.

In the US, the Argonaut Project – which includes major vendors Cerner, Epic, Meditech and McKesson along with healthcare providers Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, the Mayo Clinic and Intermountain Healthcare – are using the FHIR specification to develop an API and core data services to enable the sharing of health information in the US system.

The formation of the Argonaut Project was driven in part by recommendations from a committee of experts known as JASON that advises the US government anonymously. In a 2013 report, JASON floated the idea that the US government through its Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) mandate a standard API for interoperability through stage three of the Meaningful Use program for EHR uptake.

A JASON taskforce was then convened, which recommended that instead of the US government imposing a software architecture on the industry to force them to become interoperable – long a bone of contention with US legislators – a market-based architecture for interoperability be pursued with the government acting as a motivator rather than a mandator.

In December last year, HL7 announced the formation of the Argonaut Project to take the idea forward and to use FHIR as the basis for the development of a standard API.

It is also building a complementary security implementation guide based on the OAuth 2.0 and OpenID Connect profiles developed by the SMART at the Boston Children’s Hospital Informatics Program, also a member of the Argonaut Project.

Mr Grieve, who acts as a consultant both to the Argonaut Project and as an advisor to the US government on the adoption of APIs for data exchange, said the project sponsors also came up with some money to help along HL7’s development of FHIR.

“It helped a lot,” he said. “We had one particular project which we had identified as a necessity but it wasn’t being resourced, so we used money from the Argonaut Project to fund that to happen.

“Then there’s ongoing funding to help with the consultation adoption process and to help us establish more community presence.”

The Argonaut Project has also funded a member of the core FHIR development team, Boston Children’s Hospital physician and software engineer Josh Mandel, to work on a security and trust framework to run alongside the FHIR API.

“Argonaut’s not just about FHIR,” Mr Grieve said. “It’s about pairing FHIR with a practical security framework that means that they can go ahead and make this stuff work.”

Back home, there is the potential that a local version of the Argonaut Project will be established, and momentum is building for the wider adoption of FHIR through the regular connectathons that are being held.

“We’re now at a pretty interesting point in Australia,” Mr Grieve said. “The PCEHR is alive and kicking again and they’re having a good look at what they want to get out of FHIR.”

FHIR DSTU2 includes thousands of changes in response to trial use, according to HL7. It has extended search and versioning significantly, increased the power and reach of the conformance resources and tools, defined a terminology service, broadened functionality to cover new clinical, administrative and financial areas, and invested heavily in the quality of the process and the specification.

DSTU2 has been published along with three US-specific implementation guides developed in association with the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC).

HotDoc sets its sights on secure patient-doctor communication

Melbourne-based health IT company HotDoc plans to invest some of the money it recently secured through a start-up venture capital fund to begin developing new technology to enable secure communication between doctor and patient.

Having signed up over 3000 GPs, HotDoc also plans to cement itself as a major player in online appointment bookings and patient recall technology in Australia, positioning itself as a practice-centric organisation as opposed to competitors that rely on consumer-facing directories or last-minute appointments.

Earlier this month, Australian venture capital fund AirTree Ventures invested $2.2 million into HotDoc, one of nine start-up companies the new fund has chosen. AirTree says it looks for businesses that solve a real problem and have a clear product but that do not necessarily have immediate plans for international expansion.

HotDoc founder and CEO Ben Hurst said AirTree had an Australian focus, which was refreshing when compared with other Australian VCs that are more interested in investing in Silicon Valley-type start-ups.

“They are not necessarily interested in a company that is going to globally expand,” Dr Hurst said. “They are very happy for a company to put down its roots in Australia and create a really strong business.”

Despite working on a shoestring budget since he established the company in 2012 and flying somewhat under the radar, Dr Hurst and his team have scored some big wins since launching their first product, an integrated, practice-focused online appointments bookings solution in late 2013.

HotDoc managed to snap up long-term deals to provide online appointments to medical centre corporates Healthscope and Sonic Healthcare-owned IPN. It has also integrated with the two market leaders in clinical and practice management software, MedicalDirector and Best Practice, along with fellow Melbourne firm Zedmed.

HotDoc has worked closely with Zedmed to develop its own integrated appointment booking system as well as a patient recall system dubbed SMART Recalls, which is also integrated with MD and BP.

SMART Recalls is a secure platform that electronically communicates recall information for upcoming appointments such as Pap smears and follow-up of results directly to the patient’s mobile.

Dr Hurst said one of the points of difference over other recall and reminder services is that HotDoc has developed a three-point identity verification capability that means medically sensitive information such as the type of screening appointment can be sent electronically without breaching accreditation standards.

The system involves an SMS sent to the patient telling them they have a message from their clinic. They complete the three-point ID check and are then able to see what the message is. They are then able to ring the clinic for an appointment or book one online.

“We can also provide real-time tracking on that patient,” Dr Hurst said. “Practice managers can see exactly where patients are in the process, whether they’ve been notified but not checked the message, they may have viewed the message but not acted on it or if they have booked.

“We have a really strong database which shows all of that information and saves a lot of cross-checking.”

HotDoc provides a dashboard that practices can use to manage both their appointments and their recalls. They can also configure templates to a recall type such as a Pap smear, skin check or health assessment.

“We’ll provide templates for what we consider to be best practice, engaging patient information which optimises patients acting on that information and making an appointment,” he said.

“Alternatively, clinics can provide their own templates, and if they feel it’s more appropriate to send certain recalls out as mail instead of through our secure communication platform, they can do that too.

“The SMART Recalls platform can be used for everything so that you don’t have to do certain recalls here and then other recalls there, and we can send them off in the background automatically. Recalls are a real pain and this is one of the least enjoyed parts of general practice.”

Doctor to patient

In addition to using its new funding to market its existing capabilities, HotDoc now plans to begin conceptualising new technology that solves the problem of streamlined communication between doctor and patient.

“We really want to migrate into the doctor’s workstation and provide a way where patients and doctors can securely communicate information both inside and outside the consultation room,” Dr Hurst said.

“We certainly don’t want a notification system where doctors are constantly bothered but as a basic concept there are some things where patients don’t need to attend a consultation; things like prescription renewals, referral renewals and non-urgent results.

“We believe that we can really streamline the patient and doctor experience by allowing the ability to communicate that information securely, and also where appropriate to provide the doctor with valuable information that can help inform medical decisions. That might be by integrating with wearable technologies such as FitBits.

“We certainly say that over time this is something that patients will demand, so I believe that maybe not tomorrow but within a five-year period doctors will need to have the ability to communicate information to patients electronically.

“It is something that is going to happen one way or the other but hopefully in a way where it is not disruptive to the doctor’s workflow and assists in providing better patient outcomes.”

Telstra Health wins hospital deals for Arcus in Asia

Telstra Health has secured four new contracts with leading hospitals in Malaysia and Thailand for its Arcus hospital information system.

Arcus is an integrated patient care system that provides an end-to-end single medical record system for hospital networks spread over multiple locations, and is currently in use in more than 250 hospitals across Asia.

It was first developed by Indian firm IdeaObject, which merged with Australian general practice software vendor Cloud9 in 2013. Cloud9 owns the Monet practice management system that is being retired from IPN medical centres along with a cloud-based system called Clarity, which Telstra Health is using for its new ReadyCare telehealth service.

Telstra Health bought the merged Cloud9-IdeaObject entity in December last year and has renamed it CloudMed.

Telstra Health is now implementing Arcus at Sunway Medical Centre group, Penang Adventist Hospital group and Tung Shin Hospital in Malaysia, and Khon Kaen University Hospital in Thailand.

Telstra Retail group executive Gordon Ballantyne said finding more efficient and effective ways to deliver healthcare would be increasingly important across Asia, with healthcare costs in the region expected increase from $US1.34 trillion in 2013 to $US2.21 trillion by 2018, due to population growth and higher rates of chronic disease.

Mr Ballantyne said that while Australia remains Telstra Health’s focus, the expansion into Asia marks an important milestone in the continued development of the company as it becomes a global business.

“Our Arcus product is designed to make it easier for doctors, nurses and pharmacists to treat patients, reducing the amount of time spent on paperwork and freeing up time to spend on what they do best – caring for patients,” he said.

“The system is highly flexible and can support multiple languages including English, Thai and Mandarin across multiple sites while it will also be able to record both western medicine and traditional Chinese medicine data in the future.”

Sunway Group Healthcare Services’ managing director Lau Beng Long said clinicians will be able to access Arcus on tablet PCs, enabling optimal mobility and flexibility when treating patients in both inpatient and outpatient environments.

“It will also be an integral tool for the consolidation of medical consultation notes and prescriptions at the end of a patient’s visit,” Mr Lau said.

Wesley Toh See Wei, CEO and president of Penang Adventist Hospital, said the new system means any future hospitals in the group can be brought online, whether on premise or in a hybrid setting.

Telstra Health wins hospital deals in Malaysia and Thailand

Australia’s Telstra Health has secured four new contracts with leading hospitals in Malaysia and Thailand for its Arcus hospital information system.

Telstra Health was established in 2013 as the new eHealth business division of Telstra, Australia’s largest telecommunications company. Its wholly owned subsidiary, CloudMed, has a portfolio of cloud-based products including Arcus, which was developed by Indian firm IdeaObjects and merged with CloudMed’s predecessor, Cloud9 Software, in 2013.

Arcus is an integrated patient care system that provides an end-to-end single medical record system for hospital networks spread over multiple locations, and is currently in use in more than 250 hospitals across Asia.

Telstra Health is now implementing Arcus at Sunway Medical Centre group, Penang Adventist Hospital group and Tung Shin Hospital in Malaysia, and Khon Kaen University Hospital in Thailand.

Telstra group executive Gordon Ballantyne said finding more efficient and effective ways to deliver healthcare would be increasingly important across Asia, with healthcare costs in the region expected increase from $US1.34 trillion in 2013 to $US2.21 trillion by 2018, due to population growth and higher rates of chronic disease.

Mr Ballantyne said that while Australia remains Telstra Health’s focus, the expansion into Asia marks an important milestone in the continued development of the company as it becomes a global business.

“Our Arcus product is designed to make it easier for doctors, nurses and pharmacists to treat patients, reducing the amount of time spent on paperwork and freeing up time to spend on what they do best – caring for patients,” he said.

“The system is highly flexible and can support multiple languages including English, Thai and Mandarin across multiple sites while it will also be able to record both western medicine and traditional Chinese medicine data in the future.”

Sunway Group Healthcare Services’ managing director, Lau Beng Long, said clinicians will be able to access Arcus on tablet PCs, enabling optimal mobility and flexibility when treating patients in both inpatient and outpatient environments.

“It will also be an integral tool for the consolidation of medical consultation notes and prescriptions at the end of a patient’s visit,” Mr Lau said.

Wesley Toh See Wei, CEO and president of Penang Adventist Hospital, said the new system means any future hospitals in the group can be brought online, whether on premise or in a hybrid setting.

Telstra Health has established offices in Hong Kong, Malaysia and India.

BloodNet LIS interface sweeps ACT iAwards

The National Blood Authority’s (NBA) BloodNet laboratory information system (LIS) interface was the big winner at the ACT iAwards yesterday, taking out three different categories and named as runner-up in a fourth.

BloodNet is an online blood ordering and inventory management system developed by the National Blood Authority about six years ago.

Based in part on Queensland Health’s Ordering and Receipting of Blood System (ORBS), it has automated the formerly manual ordering of blood and also provides an automatic acknowledgement that the order has been received.

It also provides a dispatch status update and generates a receipting note with a barcode so that the product can be scanned in when it arrives at the hospital. Several years ago a fate module that allows hospitals to record transfers and discards was also added.

The NBA then began working on interfaces between BloodNet and the various LISs on the market. It has since developed an interface with eBlood and Cerner and just recently signed an agreement for an interface with Cirdan’s ULTRA system.

The LIS interface is aimed at automating the real-time exchange of hospital inventory levels of critical blood stocks and the status of each unit.

It frees up pathology staff from double and triple keying in critical data by automating the previously manual entry of received items and the fate of received items from BloodNet into the LIS, and entering inventory stock levels when placing an order in BloodNet.

It also enables the National Blood Authority to quickly intervene in supply when needed.

The LIS interface won the best new product in the development domain at the ACT iAwards yesterday, along with the applications, tools and platforms category in the industry domain, and the overall health category in the service domain. It was also named a merit winner in the government domain.

Another merit winner was the NICUcam project, a video monitoring system developed by Fujitsu and ADTEC Communications that allows parents of babies in the Canberra Hospital intensive care unit to monitor their children via video streamed to mobile phones and tablets.

The successful winners and merit recipients will go on to compete at the national iAwards in August.

International health IT week in review: May 24

Pulse+IT’s weekly weekend round-up of international health IT and eHealth news:

21st Century Cures Act
HealthcareITNews ~ John Halamka ~ 21/05/2015

We are in a time of great turmoil in healthcare IT policy making. We have the CMS and ONC Notices of Proposed Rulemaking for Meaningful Use Stage 3, both of which need to be radically pared down. We have the Burgess Bill which attempts to fix interoperability with the blunt instrument of legislation.

Health tourist’ info added to SCR
Digital Health News ~ Thomas Meek ~ 21/05/2015

Data about the surcharge status of immigrants using the NHS will be uploaded to the Summary Care Record, the Health and Social Care Informaton Centre has confirmed.

CSC to split in two, spin off US public sector work
Computerworld ~ Martyn Williams ~ 20/05/2015

IT services vendor Computer Sciences Corp. plans to separate its US$4.1 billion U.S. public sector business to form a new company, it said Tuesday.

Records access target hit
Digital Health News ~ Thomas Meek ~ 19/05/2015

Nearly all GP practices in England are able to offer a variety of online services to patients, including access to a summary of their record, appointment booking, and ordering repeat prescriptions.

Surescripts: health data transactions outnumber American Express, PayPal
FierceEMR ~ Marla Durben Hirsch ~ 19/05/2015

Electronic prescribing continues to gain ground in the U.S., with Surescripts processing 6.5 billion healthcare data transactions in 2014, according to its 2014 progress report.

New IEEE guidance on medical device security
Health Data Management ~ Joseph Goedert ~ 19/05/2015

IEEE, a professional association of engineers in multiple industries including healthcare, has issued guidance to help software developers establish a baseline of security for software development and implementation of medical devices.

AMA backs senator’s play to eliminate ICD-10
FierceHealthIT ~ Dan Bowman ~ 18/05/2015

The American Medical Association has come out in support of legislation proposed late last month by Sen. Ted Poe (R-Texas) that aims to ban the use of ICD-10.

Tech part of 7-day NHS – Cameron
Digital Health News ~ Thomas Meek ~ 18/05/2015

Prime Minister David Cameron today used his first major speech since the election to push forward the Conservative Party’s plans for a seven-day NHS, indicating that this would include making use of technologies such as Skype.

London shares urgent care plans
Digital Health News ~ Rebecca McBeth ~ 18/05/2015

Thousands of urgent care plans for the chronically ill and dying will be shared between health and social care providers across London using InterSystems’ HealthShare.

Connecting Care ramps up
Digital Health News ~ Rebecca McBeth ~ 18/05/2015

Bristol’s shared care record scheme has moved into phase two with the aim of reaching 10,000 users over the next five to seven years.