QEH to become a digital hospital
A move is on to ensure that the Queen Elizabeth Hospital (QEH) can realise its vision of becoming a digital hospital, enabling its health-care team to access medical information on computers at the bedside of patients and to access patients’ medical records electronically, instead of using paper files.
QEH CEO, Dr. Dexter James, acknowledged the above as he accepted a donation of three new HP laptop computers and accompanying mobile laptop stands, valued in excess of US$1 500, from the Barbados Association of Tampa Bay (BAOTB), based in Florida in the USA.
President of the BAOTB, Henderson Griffith, accompanied by BAOTB Ambassador and Honorary Member, Stedson “Red Plastic Bag” Wiltshire, made the presentation of the “computers on wheels” to Dr. James and other QEH officials in the hospital’s boardroom yesterday.
Dr. James stressed that such a donation must be seen in the wider context of the effort to have the hospital go digital.
“Rest assured, this donation will help us to further our vision, which is really to move the QEH towards a digital hospital. (We want to) move towards a digital hospital, where lots of the applications rolled out, can then be accessed by health-care providers digitally,” Dr. James.
He added, “These computers will provide an important boost to the implementation of our National Health Management Information System.
“As you know, the Ministry of Health has embarked on this noble project, which perhaps is the biggest transformational (initiative) that is taking place in the public health system today. What this implementation will do for us, is create an opportunity for us to be able to access patients’ records in one place, under one unique identifier and thereby permit what I refer to as the seamless movement of patients between the hospital and the polyclinics,” he further commented.
“The software that is being implemented is called MedData and a number of modules are being contemplated. To bring it closer to home, we have since deployed 31 computers on wheels across the hospital, valued about $95 000. What these computers do, is that they provide for flexibility of our doctors to be able to move these computers on wheels across the continuum of care. In so doing, it allows doctors to avail themselves of patient data and in particular, information on laboratory results and imaging studies at this point in time. So we have to see this presentation within a much wider context,” he stressed, while thanking the BAOTB for the donation.
He meanwhile noted that the electronic medical records system should come on stream by November 2017. (RSM)