Melbourne's Royal Children's Hospital has started the six-month countdown to go-live for its new $48 million electronic medical record, with plans on track to switch on all clinical functionality at the hospital on one day next April and go straight to HIMSS Stage 6, only the second hospital in the country to do so.

In what is the first implementation in Australia of an EMR from giant US vendor Epic, the keenly watched project will see the system go live with all clinical functionality fully implemented, including emergency, OR and anaesthesia, all specialist modules, full medications, orders and results, clinical documentation and scheduling.