Humber becomes MEDITECH’s first Expanse innovation partner

TORONTO – Humber River Health has been selected as MEDITECH’s first collaborator in its Expanse Innovation Partnership program, in which the Boston-area electronic medical records company will work with large and technologically sophisticated healthcare organizations to advance the abilities of its web-based EHR for all customers.

“We’re bringing our capabilities in technology to the program, as well as our resources as a living laboratory to improve care for patients,” said Barb Collins, president and CEO of Humber River Health, which has been a long-time user of MEDITECH.Collins asserted the work will benefit Humber patients, and the innovations developed will also be used by MEDITECH with its customers worldwide. “We have a duty to help improve patient care for everyone,” said Collins.

Humber River Health emerged in 2015 as one of the world’s first “digital hospitals”. It was built from the ground up with many computerized systems – from automated climate controls and advanced infection management to one of the industry’s first “command centres”.

The command centre brings data from multiple systems to a centralized room, where clinicians and administrators can monitor the performance of the hospital – including patient flow, length-of-stay, and possible logjams – while watching a wall of display screens. Importantly, Humber River Health worked closely with the command centre supplier – GE HealthCare – to refine the technology.

Collins said, “We have experience working with vendors to produce technology that helps our patients.”

For its part, MEDITECH is opening up its own resources to the Innovation Partnership, contributing access to its experts and adding capabilities to Expanse, the company’s most advanced system. As part of the initiative, MEDITECH will also collaborate on dedicated Innovation projects in addition to ongoing product development.

“We’re providing a direct link to our development and product teams,” said Helen Waters, executive VP and COO with MEDITECH. “Together with Humber River Health, we’re hoping to achieve an even higher level of EHR development.”

Waters noted that about 50 percent of the company’s employees are involved in technological innovation and development.

Working together, the hospital and the company plan to speed up the rate at which innovations can be produced, tested and delivered.

“Our focus right now is on AI, and how to use it to unburden our physicians,” said Peter Bak, Humber’s CIO. He noted that the administrative burden on physicians has become a huge problem – many studies have recently identified this as an issue afflicting physicians worldwide. Not only does it take time away from patient care, but it also robs doctors of time with their families.

“We have the data scientists and engineers who can solve this problem,” said Bak. “We have the ability to build things to unburden the physician, using AI tools like text generation and relevancy.

When searching databases for up-to-date and meaningful information about their patients, clinicians shouldn’t be overwhelmed with data; instead, they should receive information that’s most useful to them. AI can help with that.”

Bak noted with pride that MEDITECH has chosen Humber River Health – a Canadian site – as its first Innovation Partnership collaborator. He added that Fraser Health, in British Columbia, is coming on board as the second partner in the program, with Canadians continuing to lead the way.

Fraser Health is also extending the use of AI in healthcare and its role in the MEDITECH Expanse system. One of its major projects is the Digital Twin, in which a virtual copy of a hospital will be constructed, and various functions and operations can be optimized through testing in a completely virtual environment.

When improved performance or outcomes are discovered to be achievable in the Digital Twin, they can then be transferred to the real-world hospital.

At Humber River Health, Collins observed that it’s not only the technological resources of the organization that are being brought to the table. When the hospital works on all types of computerization projects, it also relies on clinicians and administrators to join the project teams.

This is what it did with the command centre, which was supplied by GE HealthCare, but Humber River Health helped to develop. The resulting innovations are now used by other GE HealthCare clients worldwide.

“We have a culture of innovation here,” said Collins.

The Expanse partnership was signed with MEDITECH in March, and the partners were set to have their first strategy meeting in the summer. The meeting involved C-suite executives along with clinicians and MEDITECH representatives.

While the hospital executives knew they wanted to focus on the physician administrative burden, the meeting was designed to further refine the scope of the work to be done.

Bak noted that Humber River Health is already involved in a MEDITECH collaborative with other Ontario hospitals using MEDITECH systems.

As part of this work, Humber River Health is testing and deploying Canada Health Infoway’s e-prescribing system, PrescribeIT. It’s the first hospital in Canada to do so.

Bak said that Humber River Health will refine the system for use in hospitals. Other hospital users will then gain access to the lessons learned so they can deploy the e-prescribing technology, too.

He asserted that with the Innovation Partnership, Humber River Health will be creating new systems of its own. The systems will be add-ons to the Expanse system, and they will be used not only at Humber River Health, but potentially by other MEDITECH hospitals in Canada and around the world.

Bak observed that the pressure to improve electronic systems and the delivery of care has been quickly growing. “The pace is a lot faster than, say, 10 years ago. By collaborating, we can move a lot more rapidly.”