Digital Health Connect, the official magazine of Health Informatics New Zealand, recently published an article highlighting the collaboration between InterSystems and MercyAscot on the healthcare organisation’s virtual go-live in 2020.
With over 650 staff members treating thousands of patients every year, MercyAscot understands the importance of a fully integrated Electronic Medical Record (EMR) in delivering value-based care. As Sarah Gardner, General Manager of Patient Engagement and Quality at MercyAscot says, “to be a value-based provider, we need to have data-rich information from the start of our patients’ journeys through to the end…to drive great outcomes for our patients at every opportunity.” Additionally, Dr. Lloyd McCann, CEO of Mercy Radiology & Clinics, adds that as part of the organisation’s digital transformation strategy, MercyAscot sought to use the EMR as a foundational enabler for analytics to drive decision-making and automation to leverage technology like Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning.
The article overviews the “robust” procurement process that involved clinicians and management in the selection process. It also details how MercyAscot and InterSystems not only coped with a national lockdown interrupting the planned go-live, but worked together to devise a virtual solution to ensure the project did not lose momentum. As part of this achievement, the organisations migrated more than 300,000 patient records and deployed InterSystems TrakCare on Microsoft Azure Stack, one of the first instances worldwide to do so.
The article also focuses on MercyAscot’s vision to leverage the TrakCare EMR moving forward, from embedding a culture of change within the organisation to leveraging digitised records and clean data capabilities. These capabilities can generate insights that were previously difficult or impossible to obtain with a paper-based system, moving MercyAscot towards its ultimate goals of providing better patient care and becoming a consumer-driven organisation.
You can read the full article on the online Digital Health Connect magazine. Additionally, listen to the companion podcast or watch Dr. McCann’s interview with HIMSS TV to for more on the MercyAscot and InterSystems partnership.
This story originally appeared in the October 22, 2021 - OnTrak News Flash No.9