Monash Health in Australia Integrates Elsevier's Order Sets Into EMR System to Standardize Care and Improve Patient Safety

MELBOURNE, Australia, July 27, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Integration to be Rolled out Across Victoria's Largest Public Health Service Provider's Network as Part of Wider Digital Transformation Program 

Elsevier, a world-leading provider of scientific, technical and medical information products and services, today announced that Monash Health, the largest public health service provider in the state of Victoria, Australia, will integrate Elsevier's Order Sets into its electronic medical record (EMR) system as part of its major digital transformation effort.

The decision to integrate Order Sets into its EMR system will help Monash Health achieve greater operational efficiencies by reducing redundancies and maximizing already limited resources to deliver better outcomes for patients, physicians and other healthcare providers.

"We recognize that we can drive safer and better quality care by providing our healthcare professionals with access to accurate patient records and evidence-based guidelines all in one integrated system," said Associate Professor Ronnie Ptasznik, Chief Medical Information Officer of Monash Health. "This translates to substantial savings both in terms of costs and time that would otherwise be spent searching for the relevant and right information on which to base clinical decisions."

At Monash Health, the first stage of the EMR deployment will involve the critical integration of Order Sets to provide clinical decision support through real-time, evidence-based alerts for clinicians to do "the right thing." Delivering digitized patients' medical records while providing medical staff quick access to evidence-based content from Order Sets will help standardize clinical practice, reduce medical errors and streamline workflows, all of which will ultimately result in better quality care and safer outcomes for patients.

Associate Professor Ptasznik said, "The ability to integrate Order Sets with EMR offers us an optimal cloud-based solution that helps simplify the maintenance, development and management of order sets. This allows for virtual, interactive and real-time collaboration and updating of orders anywhere, even from mobile."

"It's also to our benefit that Order Sets provides quick access to evidence-based content - a crucial criterion for us - that comes from the seamless integration from our subscription to ClinicalKey, which our staff are familiar with. This gives us the confidence that there will be minimal disruption to their workflow with the integration."

ClinicalKey is Elsevier's powerful clinical search engine that delivers fast and accurate answers from a comprehensive database of evidence-based content to support decision making at the point of care.

"Our solutions are designed by clinicians for clinicians, making it intuitive to use, helping providers save time and effort when delivering care," said Dr. Peter Edelstein, Chief Medical Officer of Elsevier. "Order Sets' unique adaptive terminology platform uses each hospital's existing terminology, test names and formulary, which guarantees accuracy and offers a personalized experience."

Apart from existing hospitals across the Monash Health network that will undergo this digital upgrade, the Monash Children's Hospital, which is currently under construction, will also start using Order Sets when the site goes 'live' with the EMR.

Full measures have been put in place to facilitate the smooth and successful implementation of an EMR in Monash Health. "We have a multi-disciplinary EMR Clinical Council that consists of some of the most senior clinicians, and we meet on a monthly basis to discuss how we're going to implement the EMR and to review recently completed work," said Associate Professor Ptasznik. "Clinical engagement is high and we're all very excited for it to happen."

In addition to point-of-care benefits, the digitization of clinical workflows will generate big data that can be harnessed for broader population-health level benefits. Given that Monash Health sees over a million Victoria residents a year, Associate Professor Ptasznik who is also a clinical advisor to the National E-health Transition Authority (soon to be the Australian Digital Health Agency) said: "There is huge potential for us to better predict, prevent and treat diseases by identifying the most effective diagnostic and treatment pathways for this population." This includes the ability to examine relationships between clinical events previously thought as unrelated, and taking advantage of the cumulative experience to learn how others treated similar conditions.  

The push to digitize workflows across Monash Health comes at a critical time for the industry given the government's renewed efforts to restructure the My Health Record initiative. With a budget of AUD$156.5 million for the newly-established Australian Digital Health Agency, there is a clear imperative to improve the healthcare infrastructure across the country.

For many hospitals in Australia, crucial information about patients is still being communicated between GPs and hospitals via paper records or faxes despite more than AUD$1 billion being spent on healthcare technology over the past decade. Breakdown in communication during patient handovers is one of the main causes of adverse events related to patient care.

About Elsevier 

Elsevier is a world-leading provider of information solutions that enhance the performance of science, health, and technology professionals, empowering them to make better decisions, deliver better care, and sometimes make groundbreaking discoveries that advance the boundaries of knowledge and human progress. Elsevier provides web-based, digital solutions - among them ScienceDirect, Scopus, Elsevier Research Intelligence and ClinicalKey - and publishes over 2,500 journals, including The Lancet and Cell, and more than 35,000 book titles, including a number of iconic reference works. Elsevier is part of RELX Group, a world-leading provider of information and analytics for professional and business customers across industries. http://www.elsevier.com

Media contact
Jason Chan
Director, Corporate Relations, Elsevier
+65 6349 0240
j.chan@elsevier.com

Shefali Srinivas
Asia Pacific Director, Healthcare, WE Communications
+65 6303 8473
shefalis@we-worldwide.com