Alana Harper: Clinical Informatics Leadership Award 2022 finalist

eHealthNews.nz: Clinical Informatics

Alana Harper: Clinical Informatics Leadership Award 2022 finalist

Sunday, 6 November 2022

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PROFILE - Alana Harper, lead for clinical safety and quality, Northern Rescue Helicopter Limited

Judges’ quote
“Harper demonstrates initiative, insight and leadership. We admired her persistence, consumer engagement and breadth of networking that enabled her to deliver on this work so successfully.  

“We were very impressed by how she has climbed up the ranks, starting as an end user and co design, through to now understanding how important standards are within the health information world.  Evident she is becoming an international name within this area as well.”

Nominator’s quote
“Harper worked to optimise user uptake through her inclusive approach to co-design. Moreover, she continues to seek user feedback, with input from our Information Technology and Business Intelligence team members.”

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Profile
Alana Harper is an emergency medicine specialist at Te Toka Tumai Tāmaki Makaurau / Auckland and a pre-hospital & retrieval medicine (PHRM) doctor with Te Ratonga Wakatopa Whakaora ki Te Raki (Northern Rescue Helicopter).

She leads the NRHL clinical safety and quality team, and is passionate about ensuring excellence in clinical care for all patients, and in retaining the central focus on the patient as our “why” and being at the centre of everything they do.

Harper’s work in clinical informatics spans six years, in collaboration with the three aeromedical (rotary-wing) regions of Aotearoa.

During this time she has worked tirelessly to develop a national aeromedical electronic Clinical Record (eCR).

Embedded within the aeromedical service's safety management system, the eCR allows clinical teams to capture data using a variety of methods. This includes wireless sharing of patient vital signs from critical care cardiac monitors – a first for Australasia.

This eCR connects both bases of operations within the Northern aeromedical region and later this year, will be implemented across the Central aeromedical region.

Impact
The aeromedical eCR captures and shares this segment of the patient's health care journey.

The wireless sharing of vital signs into the patient’s record creates efficiency for the clinical teams, as it decreases the time and workload to manually enter this data.

It also improves data quality, since there are accurate time-stamps with each set of vital signs.

The eCR allows for real-time clinical audit of critical care procedures such as advanced airway management, prehospital whole blood transfusion, and prehospital point of care ultrasound. In the future, this common dataset will allow for improved data sharing with New Zealand Clinical Networks, Te Whatu Ora - Health New Zealand, Te Aka Whai Ora, the Accident Compensation Corporation and the Ministry of Health.

Stakeholder Engagement
Harper brought together multiple stakeholders from different parts of New Zealand and around the world to collaborate on this initiative. This virtual team was able to work together remotely during the global pandemic to bring the aeromedical eCR across the line.

She worked with non-clinical IT developers to co-create user stories to understand work-flows and patterns to make the aeromedical eCR function as part of the organisation’s ergonomic work flow.

Internal stakeholders included the flight crew, comprised of pilots, air crew officers, paramedics and doctors. She worked to optimise user uptake through her inclusive approach to co-design. Moreover, she continues to seek user feedback, with input from our Information Technology and Business Intelligence team members.

Communication
The aeromedical eCR was designed by clinicians, for clinicians in order to provide better patient care and fuel continuous clinical quality improvement. It was also designed for functionality in the multidisciplinary environment of aeromedical prehospital, retrieval and rescue work.

Careful client stories were constructed with the patient and the clinician at the centre, driven and informed by Harper's clinical and practical expertise in the prehospital and retrieval medicine environment.

Because she is not only a product developer but also a clinical end-user, she understood what it would take to make the aeromedical eCR function well. Her translation of clinical informatics for the flight paramedics and doctors who provide care, allows for the development of a data-driven culture.