Ethekwini Hospital & Heart Centre Integrate Their Information Systems Durban Hospital is Orion Health's First Site in South Africa
London (PRWEB) May 6, 2008 -- Orion Health Limited (http://www.orionhealth.com), a leading provider of integration and clinical workflow technology to the health sector, announced today that Ethekwini Hospital & Heart Centre (EHHC) in Durban, South Africa, is implementing Rhapsody Integration Engine to build and manage interfaces between their clinical information systems.
EHHC is a brand new state-of-the-art facility due to open mid 2008. The hospital has 7 operating theatres, 250 beds and an entire floor dedicated to a cardiac centre of excellence. It is the first major hospital user of the Rhapsody Integration Engine in South Africa.
The Rhapsody Integration Engine manages and streamlines message exchange between EHHC's hospital applications, databases and external systems for simplified and more economic integration.
"We chose Rhapsody because it was already proven as an integration tool for GE Healthcare applications, and offered us the flexibility to add new interfaces as we need them," said Adhikar
Nagessur, I.T. Project Manager at EHHC.
The integration programme is a joint project by EHHC, Orion Health and Pretoria-based Waymark InfoTech. The project includes integration between the SAP-based Hospital Information System and clinical systems provided by GE Healthcare, including Critical Care, Anaesthesia, Carddas Cardiology, RIS/PACS for Radiology, as well as CKS Pharmacy, Lancet Laboratory and Digital Operating Rooms by both Storz (Endocrinology) and Smith&Nephew (Orthopaedics).
Most messaging between systems is being accomplished using internationally developed Health Level Seven (HL7) 2.1 and 2.5 protocols.
Waymark Infotech, Orion Health's local partner in South Africa is managing the systems integration component of the project. As this is the first installation of its sort in the country, Waymark in conjunction with Orion Health are involved in the actual implementation. The full integration framework was developed in under two weeks; emphasising the comprehensiveness and ease of use of Rhapsody.
"From the moment the client was shown Rhapsody, they immediately realised the power of a health integration engine. The product literally sold itself," said Ricardo Kettledas, Business Development Manager: Health for Waymark Infotech.
"As South Africa continues to invest in better healthcare provision, information technology will play an increasingly important role for clinicians and patients," said Ed Percy, Chief Technology Officer EMEA for Orion Health. "These I.T. projects will require easy-to-use integration tools such as Rhapsody, and Orion Health is excited to be part of this evolution alongside Ethekwini Hospital & Heart Centre and Waymark."
About Ethekwini Hospital & Heart Centre
Ethekwini Hospital & Heart Centre is a new, 250 bed private hospital with an entire floor dedicated to a cardiac centre of excellence. The hospital will also feature maternity and paediatric wards as well as general wards, 30 consulting rooms for specialists and seven operating theatres. Currently under construction, at the River Horse Valley Business Estate between Durban and Umhlanga, Ethekwini Hospital & Heart Centre is due to open its doors to patients in 2008.
The R340 million project is co-funded by the Industrial Development Corporation and has been built to take advantage of state of the art technology which will allow for a high standard of patient care and increased operational efficiencies.
Everything about the hospital from the ward design to the sophisticated software and medical technology works towards the twin goals of superior health care and maximum efficiency.
About Waymark Infotech (Pty) Ltd
Waymark's approach integrates consulting and design, development and integration as well as implementation and support skills to realise comprehensive results oriented solutions to customer business challenges. We offer tailor-made information technology solutions, from contract staff, through fixed price turnkey solution delivery to managed services and business process outsourcing.
At Waymark we understand that success in a competitive market requires the optimisation of effective and efficient information utilisation.
To this end, our integrated e-business management solutions successfully share unified information across all areas of an enterprise, giving required information in real time and leading to increased productivity. These solutions maximise inter business electronic interchange to enable effective procurement and customer relationship management.
Today, government and business have to comply with legislation, such as the Promotion of Access to Information, Records Management, as well as the FIC and FAIS Acts, aimed at entrenching good governance, service quality and protection of rights. To assist organisations in achieving full compliance, our enterprise content management solutions deliver industry standard security, accessibility and non-reputability systems, allowing our clients to leverage enterprise knowledge assets, grow revenues, enhance customer service and protect business value. Waymark also supplies underlying imaging, secure electronic form, intelligent character recognition, as well as large-scale storage and archival systems. As a certified Oracle Business Partner, the Oracle technology and e-business solutions offering includes integrated enterprise business solutions in customer relationship, health, financial, human resource / payroll, procurement/supply chain management.
Healthcare involves the balancing of a number of critical issues related to costs versus quality of healthcare delivery, the maintenance and monitoring of clinical standards as well as the sharing and management of patient and administrative information across a sprawling network of professionals, institutions and stakeholders. With these challenges in mind, Waymark is offering a health record management solution to keep the relevant information confidential and secure, while expanding user access. More information can be found at htp://www.waymarkit.com.
About Orion Health
Orion Health's easy-to-use solutions and applications improve patient care and clinical decision making by providing integrated health data in a single, unified view. By enhancing existing healthcare information systems, Orion Health's Rhapsody integration engine, Concerto clinical portal, and workflow solutions provide healthcare workers with easy access to patient data and trends, and reduce errors and omissions by streamlining information transfer.
Worldwide, Orion Health is implementing health information communities involving over 35 million patients with tens of thousands of active users. Orion Health's partners include leading health system integrators and IT vendors such as Accenture, IBM, Oracle Corporation and others. Orion Health has more than 1,000 clients around the world, including University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust, the Ministry Of Health And Consumer Protection of the Balearic Islands (IB-Salut), the Ministry of Health of Valencia, and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). More information can be found at http://www.orionhealth.com, http://www.orionhealth.com/rhapsody/
Media Contact - EHHC:
Linda Algie
Wordshop
Tel: +27 (0)31 202 9003
Media Contact - Orion Health:
Richard Cotman
Orion Health Limited
Tel +44 7890 637 024
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