When the first patients walk through the doors of William Osler Health Centre's new Brampton Civic Hospital in a couple of weeks, they will be entering a hospital like no other in Canada - but one that will increasingly become the standard for health-care delivery across the country.
From check-in and lab tests to bedside care and drug dispensing, the $550-million hospital northwest of Toronto is a model of electronic health - or e-health, as it's been dubbed.
Checking in or coming for a test? Electronic kiosks will allow patients to register with a swipe of their health cards and get a map directing them to the correct department. The service will be provided in eight languages, including English, French, Italian and Hindi.
At a nearby "fast-lane" desk, a clerk will check photo identification and issue a hospital bracelet that next year will include a bar code, which can be scanned.
Paper records will be eliminated. All patient information will be logged onto a computer, including blood test results and digitized X-rays and other images, which can be called up by authorized clerks, nurses and physicians anywhere in the hospital with the click of a mouse.
The hospital is completely wireless. Computerized monitors at the bedside record a patient's vital signs and allow treatment information to be added by nurses on the spot. Those real-time recordings will be accessible through hand-held devices carried by health providers that permit them to monitor changes, respond to emergency codes or just answer a patient's call for assistance.
"Innovative technology supports our health centre's objectives to increase efficiency, realize savings and focus on patient care," says Judy Middleton, chief information officer for the 479-bed hospital. "It is transforming the future of health-care provision and management."
Even drug dispensing will be computer-controlled. In the basement of the sprawling complex, a monster "drug robot" called PillPick electronically packages prescriptions in sealed baggies, which are then delivered to nursing stations and mobile medication cabinets. Each bag is specially ordered for an individual patient for a 24-hour period.
Carol Dueck, a nurse and consultant on the project, says PillPick does not dispense controlled substances such as narcotics, which are kept and packaged elsewhere in the building under strict security measures to ensure they don't go astray.
What PillPick does offer "is 99.9 per cent accuracy in delivery" of prescriptions, Ms. Dueck says. "It will ensure the right patient is getting the right pill at the right time."
Richard Alvarez, president and CEO of Canada Health Infoway Inc., says Brampton Civic Hospital is the latest move toward making e-health a reality across the Canadian medical system.
Canada Health Infoway is a federally funded, non-profit organization that is working with provinces and territories to invest in electronic health projects.
It's an evolution in Canadian health care that is long overdue, Mr. Alvarez says.
"The one big issue is that while technology has really touched all our lives and very many aspects of our lives for the better ... it's been absolutely absent in health care and it is really time to play catch-up."
Mr. Alvarez says a huge amount of time and resources are spent on repeating diagnostic tests because the original results get lost in the paper shuffle that continues to be the status quo in most health systems across Canada.
Studies conducted for Canada Health Infoway estimate the cost of implementing e-health systems across the country over the next decade would range from $10-billion to $12-billion, or about $300 to $350 per capita.
"That's expensive," he concedes. "The benefits, on the other hand, are anywhere from $6-billion to $7-billion annually in savings."
But the goal of a thoroughly digitized health-care system for all of Canada isn't without controversy.
Much of the concern centres on issues of privacy. Who would have access to a person's health records? How would this information be secured from unauthorized access? And how would a person's most intimate details be stored?
Mr. Alvarez says privacy and security constraints are being built into the system "basically at the highest level, because that's absolutely important."
But he points to drug dispensing as an example of how electronics will trump a doctor's prescription pad almost every time when it comes to patient safety.
"The system that we're talking about here, if you prescribe a drug that has too high a dosage or a drug that basically doesn't make a lot of sense, the system will pick it up and will spit it back at the doc and give them alerts in terms of what they've just done."
"So there are a lot more safeguards in the [electronic] system than there ever will be with any paper system."
Autor(en)/Author(s): Sheryl Ubelacker
Quelle/Source: Globe and Mail, 16.10.2007
