Southern Cross Hospitals and Orion Health create innovation hub

Orion Health and Southern Cross Hospitals have created an innovation hub that will deliver digital solutions for health professionals, staff and patients.

The hub is located at Southern Cross Hospitals’ Brightside Hospital in Auckland.

The innovation hub is the first of its kind in a private hospital setting, where health health professionals and Orion Health developers will work together within the hospital environment.

One of the goals is to help the hospitals move to a full electronic hospital record, and integrate this with regional electronic shared health records.

Southern Cross Hospitals aim to have a full electronic medical record (EMR) by 2021.

If successful in delivering this, Southern Cross Hospitals will be the first hospital group in New Zealand to do so.

“This partnership will fundamentally transform the way we work together and result in significant efficiencies in the way healthcare systems operate,” says Kate Reid, New Zealand general manager for Orion Health.

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This creates a significant opportunity for clinicians and developers to work closely together to develop and deliver solutions for the complex healthcare environmentKate Reid, Orion Health

“The innovation hub creates a significant opportunity for clinicians and developers to work closely together as a dedicated team to develop and deliver solutions for the complex healthcare environment,”says Reid, in a statement.

Orion Health says it has been working with Southern Cross Hospitals for some time on the EMR solution, (called Clinical Workstation within Southern Cross Hospitals),which is moving clinical processes from paper to digital in Southern Cross’ national network of hospitals.

The first phase of the implementation is now live across 10 wholly-owned Southern Cross Hospitals and three joint venture hospitals.

Once the remaining joint venture hospital is live, the innovation team will be progressing the development and rollout of further functionality to support the move to a full digital record.

“Electronic record keeping is essential to our principles of providing high quality, patient-centric care,” says Ian Malone, chief of commercial services for Southern Cross Hospitals.

“Our EMR contributes to a patient’s overall electronic health record, and demonstrates our commitment to the health sector and in supporting healthcare professionals make better informed decisions for their patients.”

Commenting on the clinical implications for this initiative, Carey Campbell, director of nursing and clinical lead at Southern Cross Hospitals, says: “The hub will allow us to tailor future developments to improve the patient experience and create a more seamless work environment for our registered health professionals.”

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