Medical Device Link.

COVER STORY

When medical records are merely fragments on paper, doctors have neither up-to-the-minute views of patients' conditions nor the facility to compare a patient's history and symptoms with those of other similar patients. Using information technologies (IT) to capture an individual's entire medical history and cross-reference it against the clinical outcomes of previous patients could transform patient care. These capabilities are the holy grail of the next generation of electronic health records (EHRs).

Many healthcare organizations have been struggling to institutionalize best-practice EHRs. GE Healthcare (Chalfont St. Giles, UK) has approached this challenge by partnering with Intermountain Healthcare (IHC; Salt Lake City), an independent delivery network with 21 hospitals and 100 clinics in Utah and Idaho. Intermountain has more than 30 years' experience using IT systems in patient management. As a means of guiding its physicians, the network has been able to capture clinical data and incorporate that information into its decision-making protocols. Based on its database of more than 30 years of clinical outcomes, Intermountain has shown that it is able to provide higher-quality care at lower cost–27% lower than national averages.

Wanchoo

"This partnership will have a tangible impact on reducing medical errors at IHC and, eventually, at hospitals around the world," said Vishal Wanchoo, president and CEO of GE Healthcare Information Technologies. "The rich clinical data that IHC has collected over the years combined with GE's clinical IT programs will enable clinicians to capture and learn from embedded protocols that will lead to a significant reduction in medical errors."

Intermountain has partnered with GE Healthcare to build a next-generation EHR system featuring decision-support and knowledge- management tools. The partnership's ultimate goal is to provide a knowledge-rich, agile information system that integrates hospitals' care protocols, enabling knowledge to be used and shared when it's most critical for the patient.