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Epworth takes an incremental approach to digitisation

Written by Kate McDonald on .

This story first appeared in the July 2014 issue of Pulse+IT Magazine.

Rolling out a full electronic medical record in the acute care setting is notoriously fraught with difficulty, an exercise that is hard, expensive and ripe for failure. An alternative measure that can provide excellent results is a scanned medical record accompanied by electronic forms and diagnostic results viewing. That is the path chosen by Epworth Healthcare in Melbourne as it implemented Core Medical Solutions’ BOSSnet DMR over the last year.

Scanned medical records are nothing new and many hospitals and healthcare organisations have implemented a solution in various forms over the last decade or so, but the technology behind scanning solutions has improved enormously over that time and it now provides a practical, cost-effective way to digitise the mountain of paperwork that still proliferates in almost every hospital in the country.

Scanned medical records can act as a necessary tool to maintain historical records but with a few added extras, they can also be a step towards a full EMR. When joined with electronic forms, electronic ordering and results reviewing and an electronic medications management module, these pieces of technology can constitute what many regard as a full EMR, without the headaches of boxed solutions.

Epworth Healthcare in Melbourne has this year completed the roll-out of Core Medical Solutions’ BOSSnet Digital Medical Record (DMR). First installed at Epworth Eastern in late 2010, it has now been implemented throughout the hospital group, with the last facilities going live in March this year.

Epworth previously used a legacy, non-clinical scanning solution that needed to be replaced. Rohan Ward, CEO of Core Medical Solutions, says there was no discussion about trying to do anything other than fix something that was broken, but there was an eye on what BOSSnet could provide in the future as well.

To read the full story, click here for the July 2014 issue of Pulse+IT Magazine.

Posted in Australian eHealth

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