InterSystems Corporation today highlighted the successful completion of an enterprise-scale integration initiative at Stanford Hospital and Clinics (SHC). With the migration from legacy integration software to the InterSystems Ensemble® rapid integration and development platform, SHC is now processing more than 2.2 million HL7 messaging transactions on a daily basis.
“We look forward to maintaining our working partnership as SHC continues its strategic move to a connected healthcare environment.”
SHC is known worldwide for advanced patient care provided by its physicians and staff, particularly for the treatment of rare, complex disorders in areas such as cardiac care, cancer treatment, neurosciences, surgery, and organ transplants. U.S. News & World Report annually identifies the top hospitals in 16 specialties in the United States, and SHC is recognized as one of "America's Best Hospitals" and was nationally ranked in 11 specialties.
Massive Rollout Plan Succeeds
The transition to Ensemble as the foundation for SHC's long-term clinical strategy implementation began with integrating all clinical applications to the hospital's EpicCare Electronic Medical Record (EMR) system, which is built on the InterSystems CACHé® high-performance object database. "As EpicCare was rolled out, all interfaces between applications throughout the enterprise were switched from our legacy integration platform to Ensemble," said SHC CTO Michael Keselman. Integration of administrative and financial systems including billing, claims, and patient registration came next.
"We've integrated multiple medical devices to EpicCare, a part of the overall integration project that generates our highest transaction volume of about a million transactions each day," Keselman said. When the device integration activity is added to other transactions routed to and from EpicCare, the total number of HL7 transactions being processed via Ensemble mounts up to more than 2.2 million every 24 hours.
The move to Ensemble has enabled multiple changes in care delivery processes, according to Keselman. "Ensemble delivers automated alerts whenever an interface issue arises, and we've customized the software to generate alerts based on the critical nature of the interface. End-users are automatically notified and everyone in the affected departments as well as the IT staff is aware of it when interface issues arise," he explained. "If, for example, an order is placed for a lab test for a person coming into the emergency room, the clinicians are automatically informed if the lab application is unable to receive the test order. In a scenario such as this, the clinicians will call in the order, eliminating wait time that can be critical in emergency scenarios."
In addition, SHC now successfully exchanges EDI and HL7 transactions with its business partners via Ensemble. Plans are to continue adding new B2B information exchange initiatives and to focus on using Ensemble as a component of SHC's SOA strategy.
"SHC is recognized globally as a leader in implementing healthcare technology initiatives," said Paul Grabscheid, InterSystems Vice President of Strategic Planning. "We look forward to maintaining our working partnership as SHC continues its strategic move to a connected healthcare environment."
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