Perfecting the purge on paper

Reducing the reliance on paper and enabling electronic options in healthcare is a goal shared across the globe.

This is particularly relevant to the UK, where healthcare spending is being squeezed and an ageing population is putting increased pressure on the health system.

• Tearing up all that has gone before

There are many options for replacing paper with an electronic solution which will increase efficiency and reduce costs. The benefits include:

• Electronic records are easier to control and monitor, ensuring information is only shared with the right user.
• Data can be shared across the care setting and trusts, reducing the need to spend time requesting information or duplicating work.
• Rules and alerts in systems can ensure appropriate care.

Sunquest has been a leader in healthcare automation since 1979, specialising in complex clinical information management with an emphasis on laboratory information systems.

Over the years, Sunquest software has evolved to help trusts realise the benefits of automation and support their paperless ambitions in a much wider arena, both across organisations and between them.

Sunquest Integrated Clinical Environment now interfaces with all major pathology, radiology and laboratory information systems as well as other departmental systems such as sexual health to decrease the need for paper requesting to other systems. Sunquest’s advanced requesting functionality has further removed the need for paper by enabling annotation of images during radiology requesting.

Building on the success of Sunquest interfaces to other systems, which reduce the need for paper requests and duplicate entry, we focused on requesting services from departments that do not have an electronic system.

‘There are many options for replacing paper with an electronic solution which will increase efficiency and reduce costs’

Clients using this module have reported replacing 70,000 to 250,000 pieces of paper every year and reductions in duplicate orders of up to 90 per cent.

The change in service delivery caused Sunquest to review how we can continue to support paperless services across trust boundaries. ICE OpenNet allows information to be viewed by neighbouring trusts and removes the need to forward these results using paper.

Sunquest has the core competencies necessary to enable providers to deliver optimal care across their network.

Sunquest’s commitment to open systems and experience integrating legacy and “best of suite” systems makes Sunquest a logical choice for today’s dynamic healthcare environment.

Sunquest ICE ensures patient information is shared securely, processes large quantities of data efficiently, reduces errors, and decreases turnaround time.

Ed Harris is associate product manager at Sunquest