On the evening of Wednesday 28th April 2021, Western Health will move the EMR hosting system from the Victorian Department of Health’s Health Technology Solutions (HTS) to Cerner. This process will deliver a number of benefits for clinicians and patients, including greater stability, reduced downtime, enhanced cybersecurity and a platform that will facilitate future digital health improvements.

The process for migrating the EMR hosting will require taking the EMR offline from 8:00pm on Wednesday 28th April until 10:00am on Thursday 29th April.

The Digital Health Technology Team have conducted months of testing and preparation for this downtime in order to minimise the impact to Western Health’s frontline staff.

The EMR Business Continuity Plan will be used for the duration of the outage to ensure risks are minimised and there is clear communication at all stages.

Following the downtime, paper records that were used while the EMR was offline will need to be transcribed into the EMR, and additional staffing resources will be deployed to assist with this.

The Digital Health Team will work with clinical areas in the lead up to and throughout the EMR downtime, and further details will be available on this information site on the Downtime Procedures page.

While this is a significant downtime, it will also deliver significant benefits and, in particular, should result in fewer unplanned downtimes into the future.

For project queries please contact Digital Health Technology Manager, Ken Atwell – ken.atwell@wh.org.au

For downtime queries please contact Digital Health Operations Manager, Andrew May – Andrew.May@wh.org.au