Singapore’s National Healthcare Group buys Soarian
- 26 October 2005
Siemens Medical Solutions has signed a major deal with Singapore’s National Healthcare Group (NHG) for an enterprise-wide implementation of its next generation Soarian electronic patient record (EPR) solution.
NHG, one of Sinapore’s two public healthcare provider networks, will implement the full Soarian Electronic Patient Record system over the next two years, including the Computerised Clinician Order Entry, Clinical Decision Support and workflow engine capabilities.
The Soarian system will be interfaced with existing administrative and support department systems. As part of the contract Siemens will work with the NHG project team providing change management advice, implementation and technology services. The value of the contract was not disclosed.
NHG says that it plans to use Soarian to transform the entire care process, delivering improved care for their patients. The enterprise-wide Soarian system will be used to connect a total of 8000 users, with up to 2000 concurrent users at any one time.
Peter Whitfield, IT business development and product manager for Siemens Medical, told E-Health Insider: "It’s a significant deal in terms of the size and it’s our first in that part of the world. It’s also significant in that NHG are taking all our major clinical portfolio."
According to Siemens, Soarian integrates clinical, financial, diagnostic and administrative processes to support quality patient-centered care. Crucially the system is also workflow-engineered to synchronize processes across the health enterprise and to ensure the right task and relevant information is provided to the individual care providers at the right time and place. The workflow engine integrated into Soarian is Staffware.
"Because the workflow engine is fully integrated with the clinical modules based on a patient’s care it can automatically trigger actions, place an order or notify clinical staff or actions taken," explained Whitfield.
The system is also claimed to be intuitive to use and have embedded analytics that enable the effective monitoring and measurement of a health enterprise’s performance.
NHG is one of Singapore’s two public healthcare clusters. It covers four hospitals, including the National University Hospital, Tan Tock Seng Hospital, Alexandra Hospital and Institute of Mental Health. Other organisations within NHG include one national centre, three specialty institutes, nine primary care clinics as well as five business divisions.
The award of the contract provides Siemens with a 50% market share of clinical information systemsi n Singapore. Earlier this year UK-based health IT supplier iSoft signed a separate deal with SingHealth, the other public healthcare cluster in Singapore.
“Soarian is a new generation healthcare IT solution that has been developed by clinicians for clinicians. It functions as a dynamic and integral part of the hospital team by driving and directing workflow processes to improve hand-offs and decision making,” said Veronica Allen, Siemens Medical Solutions vice president of healthcare IT Asia Pacific.
She added: “In addition to enhanced quality of care and improved patient safety, the streamlining and optimising of workflows can translate into measurable cost savings for the hospital.”
“We recognise the unique ability of Soarian to build and refine workflows,” said Linus Tham, CIO of National Healthcare Group. “It automatically monitors every phase of the clinical processes, and we can use the embedded analytics to ensure these processes are managed consistently."
Tham added: "It will enable us to define metrics and build best practice workflows for sustainable long term improvements. But most importantly, we believe Soarian gives us the platform on which we can transform the entire care process, making care for our patients faster, better, safer and cheaper.”
Soarian’s smart user interface in conjunction with its workflow engine is designed to route tasks and the relevant information to the individual care provider based on their roles. It presents data in a user-friendly manner in the context of the role of the care provider and the task. Each member of the care team is informed on the facts and prompted on the processes to be performed.
In a multi-disciplinary environment, this translates into people working together and in sync to provide more effective diagnosis, treatment and care. By bringing together images and data seamlessly from a variety of medical modalities in one location, Soarian also helps facilitate more informed decision-making, increased staff satisfaction, and more efficient business practices.
According to Siemens more than 250 Soarian contracts have been signed globally. In the UK NHS the Dudley Hospitals NHS Trust is the reference site for Soarian.
"So far we’ve gone live with orders and results and are now working on clinical documentation," said Whitfield. "In the New Year we hope to be taking clinical documentation out across the trust."
He added that the Soarian system had significant scope to be used as "an interim or tactical solution" within the NHS, providing a flexible way to add clinical functionality to an existing PAS system.
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