Intensive care patients in Port Macquarie are set to benefit from a new clinical information system designed to revolutionise the quality of care provided to them in a hospital’s most complex environment.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
On Monday, October 17, eHealth NSW implemented the electronic Record for Intensive Care (eRIC) in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) of Port Macquarie Base Hospital (PMBH).
Once deployed across 43 Level 5, 6 and some selected Level 4 ICUs across NSW, eRIC will be one of the largest enterprise-wide ICU clinical information systems in the world.
There was great interest from everyone at PMBH as the first patient was admitted to its ICU following the transition from paper-based patient management to eRIC.
PMBH General Manager Jane Evans said eRIC is a very important development for Port Macquarie Base Hospital.
“From day one, eRIC will provide significant benefits to patient care and clinical workflow including electronic documentation, medication management and integration with bedside devices.
“Our staff have embraced this unique new system, which has been designed for clinicians by clinicians and will support them in caring for critically ill patients.”
Based on iMDsoft’s MetaVision 6, eRIC is a system that integrates clinical data every minute from bedside monitors, ventilators and other specialised equipment in one configuration for adult, paediatric and neonatal ICUs using evidence-based clinical practice.
eRIC is necessary because ICUs are highly complex environments and the most data-intensive part of any hospital. Compared to regular wards, in an ICU thousands more data points are recorded daily. A specialised electronic solution is required to provide the complex, minute-by-minute patient monitoring and analysis necessary to safely manage the critically ill.
Director of Intensive Care at PMBH, Dr Bill Lancashire, said it’s exciting and a privilege to be the first ICU in NSW to use eRIC.
“Being a smaller but busy regional unit allows us to work together and cohesively to get this progressive clinical information system up and running,” he said.
eRIC Program Director for eHealth NSW, Robert Paino, said congratulations and thanks go to each member of the eRIC Program team and the staff at Port Macquarie Base Hospital who, through this partnership, have contributed to the successful implementation of eRIC.
St George Hospital is scheduled to be the second deployment site in the middle of 2017, followed by Blacktown Hospital later in 2017. Planning is well underway to identify further sites for deployment in 2017.
