13th World Congress of Anesthesiologists Booth T17
BARCELONA, Spain--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 19, 2004-- Key Part of Finland’s Initiative to Create a Nationwide Electronic Patient Record
The Hospital District of Helsinki and Uusimaa (HUS), Finland’s largest regional healthcare authority, has selected Picis CareSuite to automate the clinical documentation and workflow in nearly 600 workstations within the anesthesia, recovery and intensive care environments. This contract represents one of the largest ever of its kind in Europe and directly supports Finland’s National Health Project to adopt a nationwide electronic patient record.
Under this nationwide initiative, the HUS board selected Picis as its anesthesia and critical care software provider, because of its proven product functionality in perioperative and critical care automation and impressive track record in implementing to large institutions around the world.
HUS will roll out the CareSuite anesthesia and critical care system in phases across its 10 facilities until 2006, including Meilahti, Toolo, Surgical, Children’s, Women’s, and Eye and Ear Hospitals. In the first phase, HUS will install CareSuite at 42 bedside locations at Toolo Hospital, located near the Helsinki city center. Meilahti Hospital is already live with CareSuite at 32 intensive care and anesthesia locations and will install an additional 21 workstations in the near future.
According to Janne Aaltonen, M.D., project manager for the ongoing installation, HUS sees huge advantages in having standardized software already installed at Meilahti Hospital and expects to see these benefits extended across the other nine facilities. Aaltonen said, “Quality improvement of actual perioperative care for the individual patient, use of treatment guidelines, problem-oriented output of information and standardizing treatments in order to cut down on mistreatments are just a few of the benefits of an automated system.”
Aaltonen adds that HUS staff has seen quality improvement in treatments for the operating room and critical care population as a result of using Picis software. “With Picis functionality, we have better tools to analyze, modify and unify treatment protocols. We can produce statistical analysis of what’s important and where we have variable behavior within our personnel. We have dramatically improved our overall research efforts.”
“Picis considers this automation project to be a landmark for Northern Europe not only because of HUS’ vision to standardize patient data capture in the most challenging and sensitive areas of a hospital’s operations across a large geographical area, but also their recognition of software being equally important as a piece of medical equipment in these same areas,” stated, Surrey Swayne, Picis business manager for Northern Europe. “By making such a bold and far-reaching decision for the whole Helsinki area, I believe Finland has sent a signal to the European healthcare community - regardless of border and language - that it is vital to work together and transition from traditional methods of charting to automation in order to dramatically achieve real efficiencies and improvements in patient care.”
Draeger Medical AB, which exclusively distributes CareSuite in the Nordic countries, is the contracting agent. Siemens Business Services will provide project management.
Picis is showcasing its CareSuite solution at the 13th World Congress of Anesthesiologists in Paris (April 18-22) at booth number T17.
CareSuite automates the clinical dataflow and caregiver workflow around the patient care process in surgery and critical care units. CareSuite produces electronic flowsheets by receiving data from all medical devices around the patient. And the system completely automates the patient care tasks and daily workflow of nurses and physicians. Picis also delivers an advanced business intelligence tool, CareSuite Extelligence, which allows nontechnical users to perform extensive database queries and reports to improve patient outcomes.
About Picis
Picis’ integrated operating room management and clinical information system is the only solution in the industry that delivers total perioperative automation today. Picis solutions are installed in more than 20 countries and 11 languages and are proven in operation in more than 600 medical centers and integrated delivery networks worldwide, including Calgary Health Region, Erasmus Medical Center of Rotterdam, The Mayo Clinic, NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, Odense University Hospital, University of Navarra, University of Strasbourg and University of Vienna Hospital. Picis has offices in Barcelona, Spain, and Wakefield, Mass. Picis employs more than 250 perioperative and critical care experts, including engineers, customer service staff and product managers. In 2003, Picis was named a finalist for the Microsoft Healthcare Users Group Annual Awards and one of the top 100 healthcare IT companies by revenue in the Healthcare Informatics report. Picis maintains partnerships with IDX Systems Corporation (NASDAQ: IDXC), IMS MAXIMS (United Kingdom and Ireland), Siemens Portugal Medical, Draeger Medical AB (Nordic countries) and Lawson Software (NASDAQ: LWSN). More information is available at www.picis.com.
Contacts
Picis Barcleona Nicole Mullikin, +34 93 254 1041 nicole_mullikin@picis.com or
Picis Corporate Ann Joyal, +1 781-557-3057 ann_joyal@picis.com