Icon Group achieves international integration with InterSystems

Return to eHealthNews.nz home page

Global cancer care company extends integration solution into New Zealand

Icon Group (Icon), Australia's largest dedicated provider of cancer care has extended its relationship with InterSystems, rolling out HealthShare Health Connect into its New Zealand centre.

Over the past four years, Icon, has seen rapid growth in Australia, New Zealand and Asia, this international extension required the development of a fully integrated international network. InterSystems has been able to deliver this solution through a centralised integration platform with the implementation of over 60 interfaces internally and externally. Today, with the help of InterSystems, Icon has been able to reduce the time taken to integrate its healthcare applications with other information systems from months to weeks.

In New Zealand, Icon operates a comprehensive world-class cancer centre delivering all aspects of care, including medical oncology, haematology and radiation oncology. To support efficiencies, Icon has integrated its medical oncology treatment system with an integrated Patient Administration / Electronic Medical Record system to initially exchange patient demographics but intends to send radiation oncology treatment summaries back to the PAS/EMR system electronically soon.

Icon continues to invest in innovation and explore the use of InterSystems to integrate with third party suppliers where practical, such as an external dictation provider.

According to Chris Smyth, Icon Group’s Clinical Systems Manager, The value gained through the implementation of secure HL7 connectivity to the external dictation provider is quite considerable. Completing this process electronically ensures the patient identifier is included in all stages of the process, resulting in an efficient workflow finalised with the dictated correspondence saved directly back into the patient record. The use of HL7 messaging and sending the document as an embedded PDF finalises the workflow without any manual steps to be completed by staff, including the delivery of correspondence to the patient's doctor via a secure messaging platform.

We have a variety of appointment types in our PAS which aren't applicable to the dictation process. We utilise logic within the integration engine to filter the appointments that require a dictation and send these straight to the dictation app. These are then used to populate the appointments list, and flag any dictations required within the doctor's view of the app.

Icon is also currently collaborating with InterSystems to enable electronic ordering of chemotherapy drugs within New Zealand to remove the burden of paper-based orders currently being faxed from within the oncology department.

Source: Icon Group media release, 23 September 2020

Sector updates are provided by organisations to eHealthNews.nz and have not necessarily been edited or checked for accuracy. Any queries should be directed to the organisation issuing the release.

Do you have an item to add to sector updates?

Email your information to us at updates@hinz.org.nz

Return to eHealthNews.nz home page