Digital Health News

St. Joseph's Healthcare Hamilton continues to showcase their leadership in the digital health space through the successful integration of CognisantMD's Ocean Platform and the Epic Hospital Information System.

This ground-breaking integrationwill allow electronic referrals from the hospital into the community and also from primary care and specialists’ electronic medical records into the Hospital Information System, and will supports integrated care within Ontario Health Teams (OHTs).

As well, this integration uses a modern SMART on FIHR approach, which is the most recent worldwide standard of secure data transfer for health care technology, specifically addressing the need to share and protect personal health information.

For full details, refer to the full press release.

Kitchener, ON (March 30, 2021) - The launch of an integration that expands the innovative provincial eReferral initiative, the Ontario eServices Program, connects primary care providers with home and community care teams.  Please view press release below for more information. 

Please click here to download the PDF.

In collaboration with the Ontario eConsult Centre of Excellence, the eHealth Centre of Excellence is leveraging the Ocean eReferral Network as part of an eConsult/eReferral Proof of Concept (POC). This POC will work to understand how integrating technologies can support clinical workflows, increase efficiencies, enhance patient care, and improve both provider and patient experience.

Currently, there are 10 specialists in the fields of Cardiology, Endocrinology, Neurology, Orthopedic Surgery, Paediatric Psychiatry, Sports Medicine, and Urology participating in the POC. Within their Ocean eReferral form, there is language indicating that they may respond back to the referral request with an eConsult if clinically appropriate.

Click the image above to view a demo of the POC workflow.

We’re excited to share that this past month, the POC had its first end-to-end eConsult completed through Ocean eReferral (with the previous 9 eConsults proceeding as an eReferral).

Currently, primary care providers can send an eConsult directly to specialists through the OTN Hub. eConsults have been shown to reduce the number of unnecessary referrals, with one primary care provider noting that 8 out of 10 eConsults she conducted to date avoided referrals to specialists.

This timely access to experience-based specialist knowledge means patients do not have to wait to be seen in-person by a specialist, enabling them to stay home and reducing their risk of exposure to COVID-19.

Our digital health tools also hit some big milestones! Read more below:

The OTN eConsult platform underwent a big upgrade in November, enabling clinicians to access their local specialty groups more efficiently.

All Community Health Centres (CHCs) in Waterloo Wellington are now using tablets!

We made some great new updates for two of our EMR tools: the palliative care toolkit and our lower back pain tool.

We're looking forward to seeing what 2020 will bring! One thing is for sure: the future of healthcare is here.

Please click here to download the PDF.

Please click here to download the PDF.

Please click here to download the PDF.

Please click here to download the PDF.

Please click here to download the PDF.

Please click here to download the PDF.