eHealth software company Orion Health has signed a commercial agreement with all five South Island District Health Boards (DHBs) for a single South Island-wide shared patient information care system.
The South Island Patient Information Care System (SI PICS) will become the regional solution for patient information management at Canterbury, Nelson Marlborough, Southern, South Canterbury and West Coast DHBs, which are all members of the South Island Alliance.
Hospital patients in Canterbury will be the first to benefit from the new IT system, with it being phased in towards the end of the year - Nelson Marlborough DHB will adopt the system in early 2016.
Orion Health Hospital Solutions Director David Hepburn says the agreement was significant for the New Zealand health sector and globally.
“We are partnering with not just one DHB, but five DHBs that are collaborating with each other to build a more efficient and thereby better quality care model in the South Island,” he says.
“This is partnership on a regional scale, and we are very proud to be part of the South Island Alliance vision for a sustainable South Island health and disability system through innovative technology development and support.”
Hepburn says Orion Health will take the experience from the ground breaking partnership to other health organisations and health alliances globally.
“We can apply the lessons to the work we are doing all around the world in the North America, Asia and Europe to deliver connected solutions for healthcare facilities and regions,” he adds.
Hepburn says the single system across the South Island will streamline the administrative functions, making tasks simpler for staff, designed to provide more efficient healthcare services to the South Island population.
SI PICS includes patient demographics, master patient index, appointment booking, waiting list management, patient transfers, record of patient activity, reporting, admission and discharges and alerts and allergies.
SI PICS Executive Regional Programme Manager Nick Lanigan says the agreement with Orion Health is an important step toward the improved management of patient information in South Island hospitals.
“It is one of many crucial steps to connecting health workers across the South Island with co-ordinated, consistent access to a single system,” he says.