New Border Clinical Management System rolling out

eHealthNews.nz: Covid-19

Wednesday, 18 November 2020

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NEWS – eHealthNews.nz editor Rebecca McBeth

A Border Clinical Management System is being rolled out to Managed Isolation and Quarantine Facilities (MIQF) across New Zealand, led by the Ministry of Health in collaboration with local DHBs.

The system is going live over the next week and will ultimately be used in more than 30 facilities nationwide after undergoing rigorous testing, user acceptance and integration ratification.

The system is a modified version of the indici practice management system.

Javad Ahmed, president of technical services at Valentia Technologies, which owns indici, says the Border Clinical Management System (BCMS) links people directly from their arrival into the country into indici, which integrates with regional labs and ESR to create a single national system.

“There are a number of checks and balances in place to enable a seamless flow of information between isolation facilities, border control, labs, ESR and individuals themselves so that mistakes can be avoided,” he tells eHealthNews.nz.

The indici product has been developed to suit the unique conditions in MiQF where users are wearing personal protective equipment such as gloves and need to be mobile in order to test in guest’s rooms.

“We don’t expect them to work with a keyboard and mouse, so we’ve designed the indici interface so they can have a mobile tablet in their hand and everything is finger driven,” he says.

Clinical leads Michael Hosking, Jonathan Hoogerbrug and Lara Hopley contributed to the co-design of the system, which is a browser application so it can be flexibly implemented.

Hosking presented at the Australasian session of the Digital Health Institute Virtual Summit earlier this month where he said the BCMS includes work lists and task management, health checks, general health and clinical care from a Covid and a non-Covid perspective and ePrescribing.

The system also supports referral between facilities and there is “going to be bidirectional view access between primary and secondary care so the facilities can access hospital systems and primary care systems, and vice versa”, Hosking told viewers.

The indici system is already being used in some MiQF, which will also move to the national system over time.

It was rolled out to facilities within Capital and Coast DHB on June 29 in partnership with Tu Ora Compass Health.

Tu Ora indici implementation manager Emma Calvert says having a single unified national system will centralise operational management and help standardise processes.

“There is consistency of staff training and support of the platform. Input of guest data, including demographics, clinical notes, prescriptions, lab requests etc is standardised which simplifies data reporting and analysis,” she tells eHealthNews.nz.

She says the indici platform has also been extended for use for asymptomatic surveillance swabbing of MIF staff members and border workers in the region.

“A digital system offers a secure platform that allows automation and efficiency. Being cloud based, the platform is accessible through a URL and is not location dependent, and changes to process, updates etc can be instantly pushed out across the platform,” she adds.

The system can also send updated clinical notes to a person’s GP where guests have consented.

Ahmed says work is already going on to extend the system for community testing and for immunisations.

Read more about New Zealand’s digital border management system in News.