While modern medicine continues to evolve at a fast pace,
it remains quite slow in the creation of patient filing using
electronic databases. Medical information is not readily
available and it needs to be: timing is everything.
Cynthia Solomon is a mother in California who has a son
with a rare disorder. When he went out of town and became
ill, doctors had no access to his medical records. Fed up
with worrying about her son, she took out a second mortgage
on her house and created an online medical database called
Followme.com (http://www.followme.com/) which enables any
doctor to access medical records at any time. Currently,
Followme.com is home to 400 plus patient records.
Developed in 1990, it focuses on web based IT technologies
to address local, state and regional healthcare challenges,
and its clients include hospitals, medical organizations
and government agencies.
CEO Cynthia Solomon maintains that this technology can work
for everyone. Her company works with many health agencies
in Sonoma County, which has a high migrant population. “Many
of these workers have a similar problem,” she says. “They
don’t stay in one place too long and have serious chronic
medical conditions such as asthma, diabetes, and hypertension.” The
software for Follwme.com is now available in a Spanish language
version called VIA, and this portable electronic health care
system is now widely used by many migrant workers in California.
Prescription for Success
Worldwide momentum is gathering around support and infrastructure
for electronically available health care records. In the United
Kingdom, a 12 billion dollar project that will incorporate
18,000 National Health Care sites is slated to debut this year.
This network, which will involve five regions in England, will
enable all medical records from family doctors, and hospitals
to be available online 24 hours a day. The regions will eventually
be linked together to become one national online network. Regions
in Australia and Spain are also implementing electronic health
records.
Recent studies show that Canada is number one in e-based
government information. Since health care in Canada is government
run, a wealth of health care information and services are
available online, from booking and MRI to finding out surgical
wait times. A patient database, however, is sadly lacking.
Physicians to the
Rescue
Accenture, an international consulting, technology and outsourcing
group, recently completed a study with 50 executives and
clinicians at 22 hospitals and health systems in countries
that have implemented clinical IT systems - from electronic
health records to a computerized provider order entry and
clinical decision support. The study found that physician
support is a critical stepping-stone in the overall success
of IT implementation in hospitals.
Managers of IT implementation effort need to gain the understanding,
support and involvement of the physician community in order
to ensure success.
The following are some guidelines for successful IT implementation
in Health Care as proposed by Accenture researchers:
· Alignment of clinical and executive leadership—a
common vision with agreed goals and expected results
· Effective early engagement of clinicians—during
the planning phase as well as throughout the project.
· Recognition of the unique relationship between
physicians and the institution—as the face of the medical
institution and major bearers of the burden of IT adoption.
· Individualized approaches to training and support—to
fit in with clinicians’ pressured schedules.
· Tight feedback and enhancement cycles—to
gather input after the initial rollout and enhance the technology
based on the experiences of early adopters.
IT has enabled change in many frontiers: finance, communication,
transportation
and manufacturing. Health care needs to be at the forefront
of this revolution too.
Do you have a comment or feedback on
this article? Email
us and let us know what you think.
|
