Systems integration

Grey Bruce Health chooses Xenos to link hospitals with docs

Grey Bruce Health Services, consisting of the Owen Sound Hospital and six additional sites, has chosen a middleware solution from Xenos Group Inc. that will enable attending and referring physicians to quickly access reports about their patients in the organization’s Cerner Patient Care System. As the first application of this system, the hospital and clinic group will allow the intelligent transfer of radiology reports to their respective physicians.

Xenos Group Inc. is a Richmond Hill, Ont.-based data to e-content company. Its GoXML solution will go live at Grey Bruce Health Services in October 2004, with the participation of 200 physicians, noted Xenos CEO Stuart Butts.

Butts said Xenos has a long history of developing integration solutions – it has been in operation since 1981 – and has customers in healthcare, pharmaceuticals, medical devices and finance in Canada and around the world. The solution for Grey Bruce will use rapid implementation techniques, and will require only 12 days to launch.

“Our physicians are extremely important to us and it is important we continue to improve our communication with them and improve their ability to deliver world-class patient care,” said Rob Croft, corporate director, systems integration, Grey Bruce Health Services. “The Xenos GoXML integrated solution will allow us to deliver this information quickly and gives us a foundation to build upon and to further improve our delivery of information.”

The application is said to work with whatever electronic system a physician may be using. “Until now, reports have been going to the doctors on paper, by fax or mail,” said Brad Buss, Canadian healthcare account manager with Xenos. “Grey Bruce wants to move to electronic solutions, so information is moved much more quickly.”

The initial application will involve radiology records, but future applications may include patient discharge records, dictation and billing information, said Carolyn McGibbon, sr. account manager at Xenos.

According to Xenos, the new integration will provide Grey Bruce Health Services with an open and flexible architecture that solves the issue of information flowing automatically with the patient. This allows an integrated approach to sharing a patient’s medical record and improves the information between the hospital and clinics.

For its part, Xenos recently created a division dedicated to healthcare applications. “With the newly formed Xenos Healthcare Solutions Division, we are focused on providing solutions that will expand the value of existing healthcare systems,” said Bill Kurtz, vice president, sales and marketing at Xenos. “By integrating with Grey Bruce’s Cerner Patient Care System, Xenos will provide the hospital with a single, open-standards based platform to expand upon and integrate other areas of Cerner with the clinics.”

Grey Bruce Health Services (www.gbhs.on.ca) was formed in 1998 when five hospital corporations came together. Its efforts have been focused on providing quality health care close to home. The hospital in Owen Sound provides regional specialty services across Grey and Bruce Counties. The rural hospitals located in Lion’s Head, Markdale, Meaford, Southampton and Wiarton offer a wide range of primary and ambulatory care services to their communities. A clinic in Tobermory provides essential care to residents of the northern Bruce peninsula.

More information about Xenos can be found at www.xenos.com Its d2e technology is a document enhancement solution that enables the transformation, repurposing, archival, retrieval, printing and Web viewing of documents across the enterprise.

GoXML is an integration and transaction-processing solution for structured data such as EDI, EDIFACT, AL3, X12, HL7, XML, FIX/SWIFT and many other industry standards.