Mississauga's William Osler Health Centre goes high-tech with patients' records

The Brampton Guardian | Monday December 24 2007 | PETER CRISCIONE

BRAMPTON - William Osler Health Centre (WOHC) is among three hospital sites in southern Ontario equipped with the ability to share patient data through a new web-based electronic healthcare record (EHR) viewer.

Agfa HealthCare, a leading provider of IT-enabled clinical workflow and diagnostic imaging solutions, unveiled recently new technology (their Clinical Dashboard platform) that allow's users to easily access critical patient information from any personal computer, handheld, or tablet PC with Internet access. For instance, data at WOHC's Etobicoke and Brampton sites can be retrieved and shared with Halton Healthcare Services (Oakville, Milton, Georgetown) and Credit Valley Hospital in Mississauga.

This eHealth portal (EHR Viewer) solution serves the nearly one million residents living in the communities of Brampton, Etobicoke and Georgetown.

"Agfa's proven federated portal model is a 'win-win' situation for hospitals - simple in premise, and deployed at a fraction of the time and cost of competitors, with immediate return on investment," said Dieter Pagani, director of Agfa HealthCare's Enterprise Solutions Group. "These hospitals are truly eHealth leaders in Ontario, and have taken a quantum-leap towards eliminating the traditional barriers associated with sharing data." Company officials say this vendor-agnostic technology promises to fundementally alter the Canadian healthcare landscape.

Agfa HealthCare's eHealth solutions are customized to meet the needs of each hospital and their unique stakeholders, "and built on a complimentary core foundation that is web-based, scalable, extensible and focused on delivering fast return on investment." The new technology ensures all three sites (including Credit Valley Hospital and Halton Health) can securely share all patient records---regardless of IT systems or vendors.

"This makes us trailblazers," said Judy Middleton, Chief Information Officer for WOHC. "If a physician has a patient at Osler, and the patient says 'I've been at Oakville or I've been at Credit Valley', then all the information from their visits will be accessible by the physician. So in terms of expediting treatment and care, you have much more information (at your disposal)."

Middleton said other hospitals in the Central West Local Health Integration Network (LHIN,) of which WOHC is a part of, are taking steps to adopt this innovative technology. In achieving this level of interoperability, William Osler will be able to reduce duplication and errors, while increasing the level of accuracy of information in terms of diagnosis, Middleton said.

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[Original Article]