[Text on screen: Telstra Case Study, SA Health]
David Johnston, CIO, SA Health: If there’s an error made, that can be extremely expensive for the system and it can be life threatening literally for the patient.
[Text on screen: A connected cure for the South Australian health system.]
VOICE OVER: Here in South Australia, it’s been calculated if current trends continue, health care could absorb 100% of the State budget by 2032.
DAVID: The cost is increasing in real terms about eight per cent per annum. It’s driven by a number of factors - one’s an aging population, which is well known. There’s an increase in cost of healthcare because of biomedical technology. It’s extremely important that the healthcare system reforms itself. A huge part of it I believe is technology.
VO: A technological answer for SA health is the Enterprise Patient Administration System or EPAS and they chose Telstra to help them make it a reality. Telstra worked with SA Health to convert and refine an existing entertainment delivery system so it could be used by health professionals at bedside. EPAS is now suitable for clinical use because clinicians helped design it.
Judy Cornish, Clinical Director, Flinders Medical Centre ER: We have a lot of clinicians involved with EPAS and for each sub speciality to have important bits of their work flows and processes incorporated within EPAS as much as possible.
VO: Using EPAS to access centralised records can also improve the patient experience.
Terry Ventrice, Clinical Practice Consultant, Royal Adeliade Hospital: When a patient comes into a hospital they often have to repeat the same information over and over again and you have the risk of information not being relayed correctly.
JUDY: The other part is that it also should improve the efficiency of the system as well because there won’t be the same duplication or waste that currently exists. If someone’s just had blood tests done yesterday at one site and they don’t need to be repeated today, we’ll know that now.
VO: Administration is another area where EPAS will free up time for hospital staff.
DAVID: For example we looked at forms, how many forms are filled in across the system. We stopped counting at three and a half thousand. Personally I think is an absolutely massive opportunity get rid of those three and a half thousand forms and standardise the information again that reduces mistakes and mistakes cost money, mistakes cost lives so that’s where technology starts to move in. VO: Having helped develop EPAS, Telstra will also install it around the State. That means 3,500 EPAS bedside monitors will be installed at 8 metropolitan hospitals and 4 country hospitals. Telstra will also supply a vital extra element that makes the entire EPAS project financially possible - entertainment content for hospital patients to purchase.
DAVID: The state could not afford to put this technology in by itself so that the entertainment component’s critical. Now entertainment requires content so the reason with Telstra is because it’s a content provider as well as an infrastructure provider so it was in a unique position to offer both parts of that requirement. The other component that interested us with Telstra is that it saw it from a strategic point of view. The one thing I am impressed with Telstra is that they’ve actually stuck it out for the long haul, most companies would’ve given up by now.
VO: Australia is one of the first places in the world to use the technology EPAS is based on for clinical practise and Telstra has worked hard to get it right. In 2013, the official roll out begins.
JUDY: So now not only will we have all of the results and information available as clinicians at the bedside, but also can actually show and involve the patient.
DAVID: We’re not talking about marginal amounts of improvements, technology can bring quantum improvements to health.
TERRY: At the end of the day it is about the patient, that patient is the core, that is
the centre of our business and everything we do should be around that patient cause
that it why we’re here.
It’s how we connect. Telstra.com