Berne Gibbons, Strategic Relationship Manager

We are a community of people who are all passionate about what we do in healthcare. Mind you, sometimes I joke and say “why didn’t I get into something like Oil and Gas, because that industry like many others seem to be more innovative, but just like you, I don’t have the passion for anything else, I started life as a nurse and I’m hooked.

Health information technology is evolving. When you think it was only a few decades ago EMR solutions were introduced to the acute sector of health to capture clinical information about the patient and provide real time access. It was about the tools themselves. The focus on interoperability was not an issue then because there were very few electronic solutions to interoperate with and the issue of data access and management was in its infancy. Regardless of whether it is public or private health models, strategies have evolved into a connected delivery model across the continuum of care, requiring more flexible and interoperable solutions and immediate access to clinical date for strategic planning and quality of care analysis.

This is driving the demand for digital solutions that by their very nature facilitate and support this trend. Theoretically, Digital Medical Records (DMR) will enable healthcare providers to achieve HiMSS level 7 sooner and more cost effectively than current EMR solutions. The need for digital solutions that are highly interoperable and provide that real time access is becoming more prevalent and is forcing a shift in technology investment. This evolution to interoperability and data access is re-enforcing the need for technology standards. We now have a Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources roadmap, thanks to Graham Grieve and HL7 Et al, and is worthy of publication. You will know that I have been a huge supporter of the virtues of these standards, I was on the Board of HL7 Australia and can say that how they are transforming health care’s reliance on disparate systems, creating a set of APIs that health care providers use to streamline their EMR’s and the health care experience as a whole is commendable.

So armed with our standards and our technology and the meaningful discussions we are having how do we ensure that we capture the opportunities that lay in front of us, how do we identify the future requirements of technology and solutions to enable the industry to drive true benefits through technology investments. I feel the answer is a true CoDesign approach, listening not only to the business that knows they need to get the hospital or health organisation off paper to use the space used for storage and improve their ability to run analysis on records, but to the coders as they will help bring in the revenue to pay for the technology and to the Nurses and the Doctors who want the information about the patient available to them in an intuitive format to enable safer clinical practice. While listening to the executives responsible for creating sustainable organisations and the technology experts who are involved with the evolution of devices and other emerging technologies, you realise that all want to feel that they are contributing to the patients record for all the right reasons, to improve the outcome as efficiently and effectively as possible.

We can continue to take this approach with one hospital group or region at a time or we can start discussions together, share our experiences, listen and CoDesign systems that are meaningful and cost effective, I am convinced that if we start a CoDesign Community we will develop technology that works for less, less time and money. Together we can do more.I will be inviting you to a CoDesign HealthTech Group, if you are interested please accept and we can start the discussions that will lead to workshops and solutions – Berne Gibbons