Barwon Health is a regional healthcare provider currently based in Australia, where it was founded in 1988. The entity offers a variety of healthcare services through their hospital in Geelong, Victoria including mental health and primary care services.
What is the purpose of an Electronic Medical Record?
An electronic medical record (EMR) is a healthcare record that contains the personal information of healthcare patients. The record includes key information including a patient’s medical history or their current treatment plans. This sensitive data is electronically stored by a single healthcare entity and is not interoperable with other healthcare entities. In contrast to this, an electronic health record (EHR) is a healthcare record with similar properties to an EMR yet is interoperable between healthcare entities.
The new EMR system
Barwon Health will release a community EMR system next year using the Salesforce Health Cloud. The cloud system will be integrated using Mav3rick, an organization that specializes in simplifying the processes of technology as it is implemented. With this new EMR service, customers will be given the ability to receive information in real time, in addition to their appointment times, and various other pieces of their own healthcare data. The information is accessible through a ‘consumer portal’, where consumers can also exchange correspondence with their healthcare provider in a convenient manner. For employees of the healthcare entities that choose to avail of the EMR service, patient information will be readily available, giving them a greater insight into their healthcare history. Barwon Health claim that this will give clinician’s greater success in each episode of care they manage. In addition to this, clinicians that meet with their patient via remote appointment will now have quicker access to information and cut down on the amount of paperwork they were previously required to process. Barwon Health have taken a firm stance on their plans to adhere to privacy standards, stating that their new platform will contain both security and privacy controls from the beginning of the project. Barwon Health was begun implementation of the EMR project as of June 2022, and the system is due to be released within many of the organisation’s branches of healthcare in 2023. These include mental health and drugs service centers
