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Consortium aims to create intelligent Healthcare Portal Date: September 6, 2004 Canadian Healthcare Technology Magazine - By Jerry Zeidenberg Thornhill, ON, Canada Toronto, Ontario, September 6, 2004 - A group of Ontario hospitals, universities and private-sector partners have joined forces to solve one of the biggest problems in healthcare I.T. – the inability to access data quickly because of incompatible systems. “Clinicians who move between healthcare organizations are forced to contend with information silos and disparate clinical information systems daily,” said Dr. Lynn Nagle, senior vice president, technology and information management at Mount Sinai Hospital, one of the participating organizations. “This initiative just might be the solution we’re seeking.” Funded with $2.4 million from government agencies and partner contributions, the group aims to create the first ‘intelligent’ web portal – one that can bring forth a host of relevant information related to particular patients and their conditions. Phase one of the project is expected to be up and running this October. Using the Internet for connectivity, the partners plan to employ unique middleware and database technologies to pull together various types of medical information from a variety of sources – lab, radiology, ADT, pharmacy, regardless of the location or data format. Whether the records are stored in Meditech systems, MediSolution, Cerner or any others, it makes no difference, as the new solution will be able to access them all and present data in a way that make sense to the doctor, nurse or administrator who needs information. “Billions of dollars have been spent on collecting data in the healthcare system, but it’s very difficult to get at it and bring it to the user,” said Ehud Cohen, a partner with Data Glider Ltd. of Richmond Hill, Ont., an R&D company and project leader for the consortium. “The problem is that we’re data rich and information poor.” “We want to be able to access different data sources and give healthcare professionals the right data at the right time, at the point of care,” said David Lewis, director of marketing with Data Glider. In addition to DataGlider and Mount Sinai Hospital, members of the consortium are Lakeridge Health Corp., Oshawa; Credit Valley Hospital, Mississauga; Department of Medicine, University of Toronto; Computer Systems Group, University of Waterloo; Centre for Global e-Health, University Health Network, Toronto; and Compugen, Inc., Richmond Hill (a large, systems integration company that’s handling project management and commercialization of the system.) The group recently obtained project funding of $800,000 from Precarn Inc., an Ottawa-based economic development agency, and $150,000 from Communications and Information Technology Ontario (CITO), a division of Ontario Centres of Excellence Inc. The remainder of the $2.4 million development budget will be provided by the member organizations. The plan is to commercialize the technology, when it is completed, and to market it to hospitals across North America. Web portals to access information are not new, and many hospitals are already using them. But Cohen noted there are significant differences between these existing portals and what DataGlider and its partners are envisioning. First, he asserted, most portals can only access information that’s contained in the hospital’s own information system. By contrast, the consortium’s system will be able to quickly access data stored in any repository, regardless of the vendor or location. Moreover, the group’s portal will enable the end user to customize his or her view, altering the interface so that only the information sources that are needed are presented on-screen. Most portals today present a fixed view that can’t be changed by the end-user. Finally, some hospitals and health regions are using middleware or integration engines to bridge disparate islands of information. But Cohen said it’s an inefficient way of doing the job, as integration engines usually copy all of the data onto a central site. That creates storage, synchronization and timeliness problems. These problems multiply as you extend the reach of the system to long-term care, pharmacies, physician practices and other providers. Copying all of the data becomes a massive, unwieldy project, he said. For its part, the consortium’s technology will leave information wherever it may be, and pull it together as needed. “A better approach is to leave data where it is, and to link it in real-time,” said Cohen. “In this way, we create a ‘virtual’ electronic record.” Finally, there are other approaches to integrating incompatible systems. For example, the U.S.-led Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise (IHE) is establishing standards by writing ‘profiles’ for thousands of transactions that occur in the hospital and healthcare setting. (See article in Canadian Healthcare Technology, June/July 2004.) While the IHE is making progress, it’s a time-consuming and painstaking process. DataGlider and its partners are taking more of a big-bang approach that seeks to establish connectivity in one fell swoop. Intelligent middleware and web portals not only ensure that all information is accessible, but also that it can be personalized for each and every user. Simply put, the user’s computer screen is divided into blocks representing ‘portlets’, which access various streams of information. For example, a physician who needs access to lab, pharmacy, ADT, patient histories, and orders can select these for display on his or her screen. The information for all of these applications will be available within seconds, with no need to log-in or log-out. “It’s there simultaneously and seamlessly,” said Lewis. “It’s all done with single sign-on. You don’t have to bother with log-ins to various systems.” Cohen said the project was originally sparked by ‘visionaries’ at the three hospitals that are part of the group – Dr. Lynn Nagle at Mount Sinai Hospital; Jamie Bowie, director of information technology at Credit Valley Hospital; and Deborah Anthofer, program leader, information technology, at Lakeridge Health Corp., as well as by Dr. Alejandro Jadad, director of the Centre for Global e-Health, part of the University Health Network and the University of Toronto. They realized that costs for accessing information sources were escalating, with no quick solutions in sight. They got the ball rolling on the new solution, one that would create a virtual electronic record on a regional basis to start, and possibly integrating records province-wide or even nationally. The hospitals and the Centre for Global e-Health are conducting the research into what physicians, nurses and other professionals need from the system, so the right sources of information can be accessed. The Department of Medicine at the University of Toronto is providing research into the way the system can be optimized for physicians’ workflow, while the University of Waterloo is developing a declarative reporting engine for presenting information to physicians in simplified ways. Said Dr. Nagle: “The intelligent e-health portal will also provide clinical decision-support tools such as reference databases and best practice guidelines. Future applications of this solution are endless.” Moreover, by pulling up disparate sources of data, such as ADT, lab reports, medication histories, diagnostic images and radiology reports, it will save physicians the time and trouble of logging in and out of these systems. “This is where we improve the workflow issue for doctors,” said Lewis. “Bringing information together in this way will also help reduce medical error, which lowers costs for the hospitals and improves the quality of care for the patient.” Dr. Nagle noted that by creating a common front-end interface for doctors and other healthcare professionals, substantial training costs can also be controlled. “As clinical applications have evolved, we’ve been asking more of people’s time for training,” she said. “And we’ve been competing for training time with other things, like clinical education. “Conceivably, if the portal concept were to be widely adopted, clinicians could be trained once on the intelligent e-health portal and easily adapt to many different systems, in many different healthcare organizations,” said Dr. Nagle. She is also delighted with the technologies developed by DataGlider. “The potential for their solution to address a system-wide problem is enormous,” she said. For further information please contact: David Lewis, Director of Marketing, DataGlider Tel: (905) 707-4216 dlewis@dataglider.com |
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