Healthcare innovation in optima forma: Wilhelmina Hospital (WZA) in the city of Assen, the Netherlands, switches to electronic health record HiX with standard open content. HiX will give WZA's healthcare staff the best possible IT support for their activities. With the switch to a standardised EHR, the hospital gives a strong impulse to important strategic themes, such as patient participation, easing registration burden, and digital cooperation with healthcare partners.
Healthcare innovation with new EHR
WZA puts the concept of healthcare innovation into practice by offering all imaginable content for an optimal EHR in a structured way. This varies from reporting options to complete order work flows, specialist questionnaires, score lists, built-in guidelines, decision support, multimedia, widgets, and interfaces that enable information exports. With this structured content and the structured way in which this content is continually enriched, HiX relieves WZA from a part of its care burden and eases the implementation and configuration of the EHR.
Reduction of registration burden
In anticipation of the healthcare of the future, WZA uses the implementation of the new EHR as the perfect moment to introduce various tools aimed at reducing the burden of registration. For example, healthcare staff can enter their registrations in the standard content in a structured way, at the point of care, which saves them time. Furthermore, they can share the data in the EHR more easily with other care providers involved in patient care, both in- and outside of the walls of their own organisation.
New clinical noting for more efficiency
As part of the innovation, the clinical noting functionality has been renewed. A single EHR screen now supports care staff with fewer and logical clicks. As the reports are saved in a structured way, the data are directly available to other staff who are involved in a patient's treatment, as well as for scientific research and information exports.
Patient in control
The patients also benefit from WZA's innovations. As physicians register their findings in a structured way, the patients' portals contain more information. The presence of patient-oriented educational material and options to make appointments and contact their doctors online gives the patients more control over their treatments. Moreover, the portal supports the patients in exchanging data between the hospital and their own personal health environment (PHE).
Hans Mulder, member of the board of WZA, explains: 'With the implementation of the HiX standard open content, WZA is ready for the future, ready to support the care staff as best as possible with IT, ready to use the EHR for regional cooperation with its partners, and ready to fully involve the patients in their treatments.'