Press Release Source: VisualMED Clinical Solutions Corp.
VisualMED and Partners Set to Begin Installing Pilot Hospitals
Wednesday April 13, 6:20 pm ET
MONTREAL--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 13, 2005--VisualMED Clinical Solutions Corp. (NASDAQ: VMCS - News; OTCBB: VMCS - News)
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France Steps Up Adoption of Electronic Patient Record
Brussels Report Deplores Low IT Spending in European Hospitals and Calls for Reforms
VisualMED Clinical Solutions Corp. (OTCBB: VMCS - News) announces that it yesterday completed a successful round of discussions with French healthcare officials and major IT/services firms that will see the Company start installing a first pilot hospital in France later this year.
The potential for success in Europe is further confirmed by early results of a study that suggests European hospital spending on information systems and computerized solutions is critically inadequate. Governments are reviewing public policy to accelerate the adoption of new information technology for their healthcare systems. The study, European e-Hospital Census, commissioned by Health Information Network Europe (HINE) says that no more than 2.2% of European hospitals have some form of clinical information system and/or decision support at point of care.
"This study is a public endorsement of what our stakeholders have believed all along," says Gerard Dab, Chairman & CEO of VisualMED. "A major turnaround in hospital spending is about to happen in Europe and we have the right partners and product mix to service this emerging market."
According to the HINE report, France is in the vanguard of a European movement to adopt clinical information systems. Also leading the way is the British National Health Service initiative, which has recently unveiled details of its $11.2 billion plan to revamp the structure of healthcare delivery to England's 52 million citizens. This will be centered around the electronic patient record and the automation of medical records and administrative procedures. VisualMED, with its highly validated advanced technology and cutting-edge platforms, will certainly be one of the vendors to thousands of European hospitals as they begin complete digitalization. This process has already been mandated through legislation in France, while key laws are pending in some of Europe's other leading countries.
Interestingly, HINE manager Veronique Lessens points to an industry "set for explosive growth". Complete results of the study are to be published this May at a major European e-Health conference in Norway. The conference will focus on a united, pan-European healthcare industry effort to embrace effective electronic health record and the complete modernization of the healthcare industry. In particular, the Census identifies that on average, European hospitals spend some 1.8% of their revenues on Information Technology. This standard lags far behind other comparable sectors of the economy such as banking or manufacturing where Information Technology expenditure can exceed 10% of revenues.
HINE is a Brussels-based health-IT data service hosted by Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu and British consulting firm Silicon Bridge Research. According to the Census, Europe is woefully lacking in Clinical Information Systems of the kind that VisualMED provides. Some of the findings suggest that the quasi absence of some form of Computerized Physician Order Entry (CPOE) with clinical decision support has persisted despite recent legislation and efforts of governments to formulate coherent national plans to move ahead.
"For our company, this report vindicates our investment of time and money to build alliances to tackle the European market. Part of the slow progress in medical automation is in part due to the fact that established companies, mostly US based, have been offering older and more costly technologies, with costs running in the tens of millions of dollars for a single hospital," says Gerard Dab.
With newer generation technology, such as the VisualMED suite of clinical modules, currently running in such cutting-edge modern digital hospitals as Physicians Hospital of El Paso, Texas, it is easier for hospitals to adopt these new technologies because they are significantly more affordable, easier to deploy, and to maintain. A typical two to three hundred bed hospital can install and run VisualMED with no upfront cost for less than 3 million euros over five years. The VisualMED Suite of Clinical Modules runs on a platform that was conceived and designed to do away with the prohibitive cost of multi- year implementations of older systems.
"One important feature of VisualMED's CIS is that it readily interfaces with existing IT products, allowing hospitals to benefit from the interoperability and interconnectivity it offers," says Mr. Dab. "Hospitals and healthcare authorities are quickly catching on to just how easily VisualMED can be integrated within the unique framework of each individual institution, and how much time and money they can save."
VisualMED: portability, seamless transparency, full functionality, interconnectivity
In order to recall where the VisualMED system fits in terms of this European modernization drive, here is a recap of its main features and functions.
The VisualMED system is a comprehensive, state of the art, fully functional Clinical Information System.
VisualMED is "The Electronic Medical Record." VisualMED obviates the need for redundant, paper-based activities by doctors and nurses. All patient care is prescribed and documented in an electronic media that may include wireless devices with remote access via an Internet portal. The computerized physician order entry (CPOE) module is itself an expert system with decision support knowledge base and an inference engine that validates information provided by the user according to thousands of currently implemented algorithms.
VisualMED decision support validates therapeutic decisions taken during the patient's hospitalization in real time while the doctor is writing his or her prescriptions, based on information available to it from multiple sources.
The VisualMED Clinical System is a tool through which the healthcare team provides the patient with an improved quality of care. The risk of adverse drug events (ADE's) with their attendant morbidity and mortality, as well as the resulting prolonged length of hospitalization, is greatly reduced. Medication side-effects are reduced, prescriptions, lab tests and radiology exams are not needlessly duplicated, and important clinical information is brought to the attention of the prescriber proactively, so that complications of therapy may be avoided. Availability of the electronic chart is immediate, and can be securely shared at a distance.
The implementation of the VisualMED Clinical System in a hospital setting allows for audit of medical procedures and their outcomes. The audit mechanism also assures that appropriate regulatory standards are being met. The use of biometric electronic signature provides data security at the highest level.
The VisualMED Clinical System is an informatics tool that enables the physician to make informed diagnostic and therapeutic decisions. The system communicates with existing legacy systems including Admissions (ADT), pharmacy, laboratory, radiology and PACS through HL-7 interfaces. Through its interfaces, VisualMED captures all clinical information available on every hospitalized patient at any given moment, representing essentially the totality of data required by the hospital clinical staff to perform their duties. Healthcare personnel are able to access information culled from a variety of different sources through this single software solution.
The VisualMED technology was developed, tested, and has been in continuous use since 1994 at Montreal's Royal Victoria Hospital, one of McGill University's main teaching hospitals. Since 1999, more than US$30,000,000 has been spent to expand functionality and turn the technology into an effective commercial platform.
Some Specifics of the VisualMED Solution
Clinical Features of Interest to Physicians:
- Complete electronic expert order entry with more than 30 levels of
decision support.
- Clinical Information System that contains a CPOE component
supplying the complete, internet-accessible, secure and encrypted
Electronic Medical Record.
- The innovative graphical user interface was designed in a hospital
setting by clinicians.
- Laboratory and imagery results are always available.
- Laboratory and image test results reporting has built in graphic
display.
- PACS images may be reviewed directly from within the VisualMED
DICOM screen.
- All clinical information is available through the VisualMED screen
- no need to access multiple computer applications for information
coming from different hospital systems.
- Enhanced communication with nursing staff.
- Automatic renal failure dose modifications.
- Automatic drug - drug interaction notification.
- Automatic drug - allergy notification.
- Automatic clinical warnings with alternative therapy recommendation
- Automatic replacement of expensive IV with PO medication where
appropriate, if installation hospital chooses this feature.
- Complete pediatric dosing modalities and safety ranges.
- Insulin sliding scales.
- Automatic dose tapers, for example prednisone.
- Automatic notification of abnormal and STAT results.
- Context-sensitive therapeutic order entry protocols (order sets)
defined by the client.
- Cosign responsibilities clearly defined.
- All decision support and the client may define tabular content.
- May be used in-hospital or in ambulatory setting.
- Patient chart may be reviewed remotely (in clinic, doctors' office)
through a secure, encrypted Citrix server technical solution.
- Clinical data saved from all patient encounters are available for
subsequent patient encounters.
- Multiple users access patient information at the same time.
Clinical Features of Interest to Nurses and Pharmacists:
- All prescriptions are legible.
- Seamless integration of physician orders with the Medication
Administration Record (MAR).
- Medication Administration Record generates itself automatically.
- No transcription of any prescriptions to a paper record.
- No duplicate charting occurs.
- Nursing data entries feedback immediately on all new physician
prescriptions.
- Clinical signs data entries are all validated for age, sex, weight
and height of patient.
- Bedside data entry available, including wireless vital signs data
entry.
- Automatic calculation of drip rates based on physician
prescription.
- Enhanced communication with physician staff.
- Physicians enter their own orders.
- Automatic notification of specimen-obtain times.
- Automatic notification for administration of all medications and
examinations.
- Multiple users can access patient information at the same time.
- Prescriptions are automatically transmitted to pharmacy.
- Tremendous time efficiencies in the area of prescription
validation.
Technical Features:
- A turnkey solution.
- VisualMED is a mission critical application with three-tiered
client server architecture. This system integrates all Oracle based
clinical data involving prescriptions and care, and also allows
access to all laboratory results.
- VisualMED interfaces with any existing hospital laboratory, ADT,
pharmacy, radiology or PACS systems through bi-directional HL7
interfaces.
- Citrix server systems can link ambulatory sites at a distance with
patient records stored at hospital sites.
- This critical application has hardware and software configured for
24x7 uptime. Fail-over controllers provide for operational
redundancy.
- This fault-tolerant, scaleable architecture is very secure.
- This technology allows for remote site technical support and
offsite performance monitoring.
- All advantages linked to hospital use of the system can be applied
to smaller installations such as clinics and medical centers.
Administrative Features:
Diagnoses and procedures:
- All diagnoses and procedures coded by ICD9-CM and ICD10
nomenclature.
- Captures primary diagnoses entered by physician.
- Captures admission procedures entered by hospital staff.
- Automatically captures all secondary and laboratory diagnoses.
Cost information:
- All costs displayed to prescriber during order entry activity.
- Cost-per-case and savings-per-case can be linked to any admitting
diagnosis or procedure.
- System can be configured to suggest equivalent cost-effective
alternative medications.
- Avoids the generation of duplicate or unnecessary laboratory and
image test orders.
Audit:
- All charted activities related to patient care may be audited for
the purposes of quality assurance.
Security:
- Secure biometric logon and electronic signature for all activities.
- Unique consent module manages patient consent issues in ambulatory
environment across multiple clinic and hospital sites.
- Conforms to HIPPA requirements for confidentiality of patient
record.
Public Health Features:
- Reduction in the annual incidence of adverse drug effects, with
resultant decrease in morbidity and mortality in the population
seeking medical treatment.
- Improved safety in the provision of complex modern therapies to
sick patients.
- Reduction in the medical malpractice risk for healthcare providers.
- Decrease in the length of stay for hospitalized patients.
- Improvement in the delivery of health care at all installed sites
(allows nurses to spend more time caring for their patients).
- Improved morale of health care providers at installation site.
- Improved access to existing health care resources and maximization
of use of existing resources (especially in the emergency
department).
- Improved quality of hospital-based as well as ambulatory practice
on the basis of the inclusion of best-practice care protocols
included in the system.
- Advance the development of a practical regional patient medical
record available at whatever hospital or clinic the patient attends
in his or her region.
General Features:
- Contributes to an ecological benefit by reducing the amount of
paper used in a hospital.
- Allows for considerable time saving in charting and accessibility
of the patient records including radiology images, as the only
requirement for access is the digital imprint.
- Improves working conditions for the nursing staff by giving them a
professional tool that saves 95% of time devoted to clerical work.
Formularies and reports are automatically generated.
- The hospital admission process is shortened, the long waiting lists
eliminated.
- The hospital center can realize approximately a 20% global saving
in areas such as drugs, laboratory and radiology tests,
administration and communication time, plus medical and nursing
care.
Modules
VisualMED modules come in four broad classes - administrative/support, nursing, clinical, and the electronic health record.
Administrative module:
VisualADMIN is the principal administrative module. It allows users with the appropriate security rights to access screens that may be used to define and modify architectural "seed data;" define the business rules for the clinical order entry for the 6 general order entry types - drugs, labs, IV solutions, image tests, nursing orders, dressings, as well as the special order entry types - sliding scales, drug tapers, transfusions, TPN; create and modify decision support algorithms that are called at multiple levels in the order entry sequence; create and modify decision support algorithms that operate as background processes; maintain the ward/bed configuration of the institution as represented inside the system; maintain the set of diagnoses represented inside the system; maintain any sets of system requisitions as may be required by the system; maintain the set of system user groups and user group rights, and maintain the set of system parameters that are used to determine the system configuration. The functionality that may be accessed though VisualADMIN is of a clinical-administrative nature. The company supplies all of the content required for full function of the system at the time of installation. The client may modify any of the content at any time in plain language. VisualADMIN is a required module in the setting of a minimal VisualMED installation.
Nursing module:
The VisualMED nursing module (VisualNURSE) integrates all physician / nursing clinical functions at the order entry and clinical data entry levels. VisualNURSE contains the Medication Administration Record, which is automatically generated by the VisualMED system according to a rules engine, which "translates" the physician's prescription into the date-times for prescription administration. These rules are supplied by VisualMED at installation time, and may vary for each individual clinical module. VisualNURSE also contains the Care Plan and screen sets that allow for the recording and (graphic) display of clinical information including vital signs, glucometer-insulin record, input and output, and pain scale. Additional screens exist for the recording of the nursing history. The System Administrator through VisualADMIN manages the seed content of VisualNURSE. All clinical modules (see below) access VisualNURSE. VisualNURSE is a required module in the setting of a minimal VisualMED installation.
Clinical Modules:
The VisualMED clinical modules broadly correspond to the individual clinical specialty services of medicine and surgery. All of the patients in a particular census may all be linked to a single module - the patient is hospitalized on an Internal Medicine ward, for example - or patients in a given census may each be attached to different modules - a hematology / oncology ward, for example. Each clinical module may have its own set of available drug listings, its own table of order sets, and unique decision support algorithms. The look and feel of each clinical module is constant, though modules may contain unique screens, which may not be available elsewhere in the VisualMED Clinical System. For example, VisualER uses unique patient tracking screens; VisualICU, CCU, and ER contain unique results reporting screens. The System Administrator through VisualADMIN manages the seed content of the clinical modules. At least one clinical module is required in the setting of a minimal VisualMED installation.
The system includes, as an option, a DICOM viewer embedded in the clinical signs and results reporting screens so that PACS images may be viewed directly within the clinical context of the VisualMED clinical data display screens.
Electronic medical record:
Note that all clinical modules come with a complete electronic patient record (EMR) used by physicians, consultants, nursing staff, and paramedical staff to record their admission and progress notes in a coded, menu-driven or free-text format, depending on the preference of the individual user. Clinicians can access all date related to their patient through the EMR, and can, as well filter the content to view only those notes relevant to the query at hand. Clinical data entered into the EMR is available to review for the purposes of quality assurance by the clinical staff, administration, and, where law permits, may be consulted by the patient.
Components
Available components, with a brief accompanying description, include
the following:
- VisualADMIN - maintenance of system tables and expert content by
System or Clinical Administrator
- VisualNURSE - contains self-generating MAR, order "pickup" screens,
specimen notification screens and icons, nursing, IV solution input
tally screens, automatic clinical activities scheduling,
cosignature and verbal orders capability, nursing documentation
- Clinical CPOE modules - includes VisualMD (Internal Medicine),
VisualPEDIATRICS, VisualER, VisualSURGEON, VisualNEUROLOGY,
VisualCCU, VisualICU, VisualOBGYN, VisualDERMATOLOGY.
- VisualCHART(1) - the complete, electronic patient record for the
current hospitalization
- VisualGUIDE - context-sensitive clinical guide linked to medical
terminology and patient laboratory results
- VisualALERTS - contains system decision support components
- VisualRESULTS - complete numerical, text, and image test reporting
with both tabular and graphic display
- VisualREPORTS - viewable/printable clinical reports appropriate to
the needs of the Service Chief or Nursing Director, used for
quality assurance projects
- VisualINSTRUCTIONS - viewable/printable instruction sheets for
patients
- VisualPHARMACY - access to clinical screens from the pharmacy, with
work triage and bi-directional link to inventory system
- DICOM viewer - for viewing PACS images directly through VisualMED
clinical screens
About the Company and its products
VisualMED Clinical Solutions Corp. is a leading provider of clinical informatics solutions that help hospitals and healthcare authorities reduce medication errors, increase personnel efficiency and bring down operating costs. One of its key components, Computerized Physician Order Entry (CPOE), is a core solution in the new agenda to promote greater patient safety and reduce the morbidity and mortality associated with medication error. The company is involved in major government initiatives on three continents to modernize hospitals and healthcare delivery.
Detailed information on our company and its products is available on our web site at www.visualmedsolutions.com.
Forward-Looking Statements
Except for historical information provided herein, this press release may contain information and statements of a forward-looking nature concerning the future performance of the Company. These statements are based on suppositions and uncertainties as well as on management's best possible evaluation of future events. Such factors may include, without excluding other considerations, fluctuations in quarterly results, evolution in customer demand for the Company's products and services, the impact of price pressures exerted by competitors, and general market trends or economic changes. As a result, readers are advised that actual results may differ from expected results.
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Contact:
VisualMED Clinical Solutions Corp.
Barry Scharf
COO
(514) 274-1115 ext.108
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Source: VisualMED Clinical Solutions Corp. |
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