Dear RIS Insider,
Implementing and deploying an electronic healthcare record (EHR) throughout a regional healthcare information organization (RHIO) is a daunting and challenging task. There is a variety of disparate clinical information systems from multiple manufacturers in numerous iterations spread throughout a geographic region that somehow need to share data.
Each system has advocates who are fierce about maintaining its continued use, and each clinical specialty has a preferred method for presenting its results -- and this can vary from location to location. Teaching Esperanto to the builders of the Tower of Babel might be an easier task in comparison.
Clalit Health Services, a health maintenance organization (HMO) and integrated delivery network (IDN) based in Tel Aviv, Israel, decided to investigate the possibilities of deploying an EHR and RHIO in its facilities. These comprise 14 hospitals with 600 departments and 1,250 clinics handling 60 million primary care encounters annually.
The HMO began its investigations into creating an EHR and RHIO in 1999, and by last year had implemented and integrated its legacy systems across the entire IDN. The EHR has a decentralized structure without a single point of failure, no central database, and is capable of querying all clinical information systems and returning data to clinicians within 10 seconds. It has been so successful that other Israeli HMOs have become part of the network, extending its reach across the country.
To learn more about how Clalit successfully deployed an EHR and RHIO without replacing its legacy clinical systems, click here. As a RIS Insider subscriber, you have access to this story before it's published for the rest of our AuntMinnie.com members at the end of the week.
Also, be sure to check back in with us throughout the coming months. We're at the PACS 2006 conference in San Antonio, providing coverage on breaking healthcare informatics news, and will be back in Texas next month covering the 2006 Society for Computer Applications in Radiology (SCAR) meeting in Austin.
Finally, if you have a comment or story to share about any aspects of RIS or healthcare IT, please get in touch with me at [email protected]. I look forward to hearing from you.
