The Ethekwini Hospital and Heart Centre (EHHC) was conceived and designed as a hi-tech medical facility. Officially opened last week, the EHHC has been operational since July, performing 600 operations, and treating more than 2 000 patients.
It was built at a cost of R350 million, R50 million of which is estimated to be ICT-related. The 250-bed facility features an SAP backend (implemented by T-Systems), T-Systems Industry Solution Health-Medical System, a radiology solution and pharmacy solution, and electronic medial record (EMR) solution and anaesthesia record solution, as well as office productivity systems.
Hospital manager Keith Bonsall describes the facility as “digitally-integrated”. This means that instead of a paper trail following a patient around the hospital, an electronic trail is available, in real-time, to all staff, from nurses to surgeons to the administration department. This is facilitated by the SAP system, and the Centricity EMR system.
Patients are booked in and their record follows them to the ward. At the ward, nurses and doctors can do everything from ordering scripts, X-rays and the like via mobile computers called cows (computers on wheels). The specialist care units also have computers at the bedside monitoring and recording all of a patient's vital statistics, a task nurses in non-digitised hospitals have to do manually.
Teething problems
Scripts, X-rays or other test requests are automatically routed to their destination, minimising paperwork and waiting times as staff no longer rely on porters to ferry scripts, medication, lab results and the like around the hospital.
There are teething problems: doctors cannot, for example, access patient records from wherever they are - a functionality that is planned for further phases of the rollout. There is also a change management issue - doctors and surgeons that have been operating under a paper-based system are reluctant to change to the new system, and a hybrid model is currently operating at the hospital as a result.
Bonsall says patients are extremely satisfied, as are nursing staff.
“We couldn't just build a hospital. We believe the future of hospitals has to be a dramatic increase in the use of technology. This way nurses are free to nurse; doctors have timeous and accurate information for decision-making, resulting in great quality of care and shorter hospital stays for the patient; and the patient is really what it is all about.”
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