The vision for paperless information exchange across Australian hospitals and healthcare edged closer this month when Dedalus ANZ added a globally successful enterprise content management (ECM) solution to its software portfolio.

The ECM, HYDMedia G6, has been implemented by around 670 healthcare organisations, mostly in Europe where it has been a trusted product for 30 years.

Dedalus HYDMedia Director of Global Business & Solution Management Ghislain Boisseau visited Australia to introduce the ECM to healthcare executives, calling it a key enabler for digital health strategy into the future.

“HYDMedia is a clinical enterprise content management (ECM) solution fully dedicated to hospitals and clinics,” he said.

“We see that a lot of organisations in Australia and New Zealand are still paper driven, so staff are writing on pre-printed paper forms, then scanning them back in.

“In some hospitals, software creates electronic information, but they can’t mix that with scanned documentation. They end up printing electronic documents to scan them again. We can help solve this.

“With HYDMedia G6 you can stop scanning and printing. You can integrate the data and bring more information more quickly to the end user,” Mr Boisseau said. “Sharing means more than clicking to send an email. It’s about integrating content within the hospital IT system by making it available directly within the leading system users work in, whether that’s PAS, an EMR or others.

“The idea is to collect all information, regardless of the system that produced it, and make it available in one place.

“Users can access their content with our own ergonomic interface and training is typically less than half a day,” Mr Boisseau said.

INTEGRATION WITH EMR

Mr Boisseau said one of the use cases he provided to interested hospitals was around migration and the value of the ECM to prepare for future EMR implementation.

“We’ve done several projects where HYDMedia has been the first step to an EMR as it has centralised data and patient information content at the ready.

“HYDMedia G6 is completely agnostic, so it integrates with any PAS or EMR whether or not you are implementing with Dedalus. Though of all the implementations, 65 per cent of customers are with Dedalus,” Mr Boisseau said.

“Doctors need a single source of truth. When information is split between software and paper, mistakes can happen. When you implement HYDMedia, the reference point for clinicians is the IT system,” he said.

“It’s not always easy to quantify in dollars, but it increases quality including the quality of information and clinical decision-making.”

USE OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

Mr Boisseau said there was a role in the future for AI. “We are developing deeper possibilities for structured data, not just PDFs. It means picking up each single result, sharing it and making use of it.

“Hospitals sit on a goldmine of data. Some is old and based on paper, but with artificial intelligence we can deep-dive into documents and extract structured data for secondary use like research.

“Teaching hospitals, or even smaller ones, may want to use data for research or partnerships, for example,” he said.

BUSINESS CONTINUITY AND SUSTAINABILITY

“It is a major benefit of the system that HYDMedia knows who and where patients are situated down to which ward, which is essential for business continuity,” Mr Boisseau said.

“HYDMedia contains a module which replicates content in a separate data location on-prem, usually focused on patients currently admitted to the hospital.

“In the event of a crisis impacting electricity and internet, hospitals can continue to access encrypted data electronically with a standalone PC.

“And, there’s no real capacity cut-off. We have a 50-bed hospital using the system and a 6,000-bed group. There is no limit behind it.”

He said for the hospital and healthcare sector today, anywhere in the world, sustainability remains a key topic and an electronic system contributes to reducing the carbon footprint.

“Buying paper and ink, driving around, buying boxes, transporting files, storage, recycling, there is a cost attached,” Mr Boisseau said.  “These relatively small things add up. Healthcare is huge when it comes to resource consumption.”