Phase 2 of Western Health’s EMR development has entered an exciting stage, with the commencement of Sprint 1, the first of eight five-week Sprints between now and March 2022.

This week saw completion of a series of sessions reviewing and informing the design, build and validation of the new EMR functionality in support of its introduction into the Emergency, Cancer Services, Perioperative/Intensive Care, Renal, Women’s and Children’s, and Outpatients clinical areas.

Members of the Digital Health team, along with clinical experts from across Western Health and our colleagues at Cerner have taken part in over 90 sessions this week to ensure the enhanced EMR is well-suited to the needs of the organisation ahead of a planned Go-Live in November 2022.

As part of the sessions, Cerner presented a series of “walk through” demonstrations, designed to give Western Health staff a guide to what they can expect from the expanded EMR when it is implemented.

While it was a very early look at the new system, Project Manager for Specialist Clinics, Emily Sanders, said the feedback on these sessions was very promising.

“These sessions provided clarity and demonstrated the ease of use and benefits of not having to use multiple systems,” Emily said.

“It was nice to see everything connect and see it from the clinician side as well as the admin side to see how everything will work together, and it helped us gain a better understanding of Cerner functionalities in the Western Health workflows context.”

Women’s and Children’s Project Manager Denise Schembri said it was exciting to see the benefits a fully integrated EMR would bring for staff and patients at Western Health.

“Our first look at the system showed it to be very user friendly, highly customisable and a fit for purpose solution for patients in the Women’s and Children’s space,” Denise said.

“This will improve patient experiences, as well as safety and outcomes throughout the maternity journey.”

The first week of workshops also saw design components of the expanded EMR commence through consultation with the project team, accountable leaders, clinical and non-clinical liaisons and the EMR Operational analysts.

Over the next few weeks the project team will continue to collect the data required for the EMR design before validating this in future workshops as we work towards our enhanced EMR to further deliver high quality, safe and efficient patient care for the western suburbs community.

For more information please visit the EMR Phase 2 page of this site.

Note: the following images are a guide only and were prepared in a training environment. They do not feature any real patient details.