Allscripts, a health IT company, has won a competitive contract to provide an electronic chemotherapy prescription system to more than 20 SA Health hospitals and care facilities throughout South Australia that provide cancer treatment services.
According to SA Health, the system will be developed, built, and deployed over the course of two and a half years, with the first deployment beginning in mid-2022. It will be linked with their current Allscripts EMR system.
WHY DOES IT MATTER?
The iQemo solution from the UK-based firm iQ Health Tech will be presented. According to a press release, it has features including preset regimens, prescription, scheduling, dispensing, chemotherapeutic administration, and reporting.
According to Allscripts ANZ General Manager Todd Haebich, the ECPS solution improves patient safety with features such as comprehensive chemotherapy regimen management, automatic dose calculations, allergy and sensitivity alerting, decision support linked to pathology and toxicity, and drug-to-drug interaction support.
By providing a legible electronic medication administration chart with all medicines presented in the order based on a treatment protocol, the iQemo system will meet SA Health's requirement for coordinated care of cancer patients whilst reducing the risk of dosage mistakes.
Furthermore, the integration of iQemo with the Allscript Sunrise EMR will allow for a "more comprehensive patient record." The latter is a single-platform acute and ambulatory solution that provides physicians with the most up-to-date information at the point-of-care delivery. Sunrise is now placed at a variety of public healthcare facilities across the state, including the Royal Adelaide Hospital, Flinders Medical Centre, and The Queen Elizabeth Hospital.
THE OVERALL CONTEXT
Following a failed evaluation, SA Health updated its EMR system across all of its institutions in 2019. The independent review's main suggestion was to implement Allscripts' Sunrise EMR and Paperless Administration System.
Allscripts EMR was recently implemented in the emergency departments of public health providers in Victoria via the Gippsland Health Alliance.
IN THE BOOKS
Paul Thomas, Project Director for SA Health's ECPS, said that Allscripts has a thorough knowledge of SA Health's clinical, commercial, and technological environments, and will deploy the iQemo solution in collaboration with iQemo specialists from the United Kingdom. This strategy gives SA Health confidence that the iQemo solution will be delivered safely and on schedule.
Allscripts ANZ's Haebich added that the combination of relationship with iQ Health Tech and the power and capability of Microsoft Azure enables us to deliver an exceptional SaaS product to SA Health that has been tried and tested in the UK and that improves both efficiency and patient safety associated with chemotherapy prescribing and administration.
