Isle of Man launches electronic document management

An electronic document management solution has gone live at Noble’s Hospital, the latest strand in the Isle of Man government’s drive to fully digitise health records by 2018.

The hospital has scanned paper-based medical and maternity records and made them available to clinical and clerical workers using IMMJ’s MediViewer EDMS. The software integrates with its Medway (System C) patient administration system and electronic patient record system.

When complete, the paperless project – which forms part of the government-wide Digital Strategy – will see in excess of 100,000 paper-based medical records transferred into a digital format, with more than 16 million sheets of paper eventually being eliminated.

The work is being carried out one division at a time, starting with women and children before moving on to surgical and then the medical specialities.

Richard Wild, chief information and digital officer at the Isle of Man’s Department of Health and Social Care, said user engagement was key to the project.

“It was very important to us to find a solution for the integration that met all our user requirements, to ensure that we had everyone’s buy-in.”

“We are really pleased with the results. The system is intuitive and fast and an important next step in our goal to be using digital records by the end of 2018”.

Markus Bolton, CEO of System C, said because of the MediViewer to Medway integration, clinical and administrative staff can read all the relevant information about a patient quickly and from almost any web-enabled device.

“Advantages include speed of access, and the fact the information is available when it is needed, from almost any web-enabled device”, Bolton said.

“The benefits include a considerable saving in time previously spent filing, searching for and retrieving paper notes as well as accurate, legible quality data.”

Specialised training has been put in place throughout Noble’s Hospital, covering all the departments which will be using digital records.