Caption: One innovation developed by NovaHealth was a project for Singapore’s National Skin Centre to allow doctors to do away with relying on pen and paper.

May 2008: All it takes is a single mouse click for the doctor or nurse to retrieve a particular patient record from a quarter million other records residing in the National Skin Centre.

Besides the huge database of medical records, the centre also has to handle 220,000 patient visits each year. In the past, patients faced long waiting time aggravated by delays in the retrieval and handling of the 250,000 medical records.

With the successful implementation of the VESALIUS-CMS (Clinical Management System), provided by NovaHealth, which went live in March 2004, there has been a significant reduction in waiting time, with each patient cutting their visit by as much as 30 minutes.

The new system ensures that from the time the patient registers to the time the patient departs, information is flowing seamlessly to various departments.

The system also provides a toolkit which allows the doctor to describe patients' conditions diagrammatically with precise location of the clinical findings in electronic form. All annotated charts are integrated with the centre's Electronic Medical Record and retrievable during consultations.

The project has led to better patient care because doctors can now record more accurate information to chart the progress of skin disorders.

The project also sought to establish diagnosis and treatment protocols by correlating physical findings and treatment plans for improved disease management.

The toolkit was developed on top of VESALIUS-CMS (Clinical Management System) that was deployed in the centre.

The centre is the first in the healthcare industry in Singapore to go paperless using the Electronic Medical Record system.

With the success of the National Skin Centre and other projects in the region, NovaHealth was given the challenge in November 2006 to implement a hospital information system for St Andrew’s Community Hospital. It was operational on July 1, 2007.

NovaHealth had to consider the expansion of the hospital from 60 beds to 200. This meant changes to the hospital’s operations and care processes. With a tight time frame, NovaHealth had to work closely with the project team of the community hospital.

The HIS deployed at St Andrew's was VESALIUS, a full-fledged hospital information system which covers front-end modules such as Appointments, Registrations, ADT and billing to ancillary support modules such as Pharmacy, Medical Records and back-end support for Inventory and integration to the Financial System.

Steven Chan, chairman of NovaHealth, says: “VESALIUS Hospital Information System gives a holistic view of the whole operations because modules are well integrated. Management can have a comprehensive view of the operations with increase in efficiency and minimisation of wastage of material and manpower resources.”

In-house development project

VESALIUS HIS which was developed in-house in 1999, is intended primarily to support the complete workflow of a hospital – from the moment the patient walks into the healthcare facility and registers, up to billing and discharge. Most importantly, VESALIUS promptly provides all relevant and accurate information at every point of service to ensure a pleasant experience for the patients.

Steven adds: “We implement projects using modular components selected from our Web-based proprietary system, which addresses all layers of healthcare. This strategy drastically reduces turnkey development risks and open-ended timelines. It is also highly parameterised, thus reducing the need for project-specific modifications”.

With the company’s venture into the regional market, the “brains” at NovaHealth were able to integrate the functions of a hospital or hospitals within their hospital group to allow the sharing of information. Besides the administrative functions, VESALIUS, a web-based system encompasses the clinical needs of caregivers such as doctors, surgeons and nurses.

Adopters of VESALIUS Multi-Organisation system in the region include: Pondok Indah Healthcare Group and Sinar Mas Group both in Indonesia.
Pondok Indah Healthcare implemented the system in two of its hospitals in 2004 and 2008. Tavri Deviyan, the group’s chief information officer, speaks of the initial challenge: “As the hospital group grows, the continuous challenge for our IT department was to ensure that we support them adequately across several locations. Instead of implementing two separate systems for our two hospitals, we realised that with the VESALIUS Multi-Organisation, we can extend the services to users across a wide area network.”

This is a noteworthy step for the group in its quest to go paperless. With a centralised Electronic Medical Record (EMR) repository – a first in Indonesia, the system can now provide timely and accurate information at the point of care which can be critical in emergencies and cases with medical alerts or drug allergies.

The Sinar Mas Group is one of the largest conglomerates in Indonesia. As it ventures into a non-traditional industry such as healthcare and hospital management, it views IT as a critical tool to help them manage and continuously improve their hospital operations.

In 2007, NovaHealth signed a contract with PT Ekamas International Hospital to provide hospital management systems to hospitals developed by Sinar Mas Group.

“We found NovaHealth as an ideal partner that provides innovative IT solutions to manage the challenges we face in running a hospital. VESALIUS also excels in the clinical operation support and the focus on patients' wellbeing. This strategy is in line with our vision in creating a hospital whose services are patient-centric,” says Ivan Gunawan, IT Project Leader at Eka Hospital.

The Sinar Mas Group will implement the system in two of its hospitals in 2008.

In its next phase of growth, NovaHealth is actively seeking collaborations with partners in new territories such as the Middle East. The company hopes to leverage on the expertise and market knowledge of the partners in marketing, consulting, implementation and training.

“We want to position our VESALIUS system to become the provider of the SAP business software (Systems, Applications and Products in Data Processing) of the healthcare industry,” says chairman Steven Chan.

About NovaHealth

NovaHealth, a Singapore-based company is a major provider of a total hospital information system. It has a comprehensive line-up of software solutions to enable healthcare professionals to enhance patient service-levels, improve clinical outcomes, incorporate price/cost-controls and ultimately boost the organisation’s bottom-lines.

NovaHealth is a spin-off from the Nova Group of companies, founded in 1995 by four techno-entreprenuers, Steven Chan Wing Kong, Dr Victor John Stephen Price, Lai Teik Kin and Raymond Tan Yew Soon.

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