West Hertfordshire Hospitals NHS Trust selects Carefx Fusionfx clinical portal

Carefx Corp., a leading provider of interoperable workflow solutions, today announced that West Hertfordshire Hospitals NHS Trust (West Herts) has chosen the Fusionfx solution suite to provide simplified access to an aggregate view of patient information within a singular portal. The portal is a component of the Trust's strategy to "Connect All," rather than "Replace All."

With the Carefx solution, clinicians at the Trust's three hospitals – Watford General, St. Albans City and Hemel Hempstead Hospitals will benefit from streamlined, secure access to applications and patient data in real-time, reducing time spent navigating between systems and applications and improving the quality, safety and efficiency of patient care.

"As a busy clinician running the largest Acute Admission Unit in the country, having patient information available at a glance is an essential requirement. I am therefore very excited with the functionality and ease of use offered by the Clinical Portal," said David Gaunt, M.D., A&E Consultant and Clinical Director, Emergency Care at West Herts.  

The Fusionfx Portal will provide multidisciplinary teams with point of care access to a patient-centric view of demographics, encounter information, test results and images. Clinicians will access critical patient data from applications that include Clinicom, Infoflex, Sunquest ICE and Agfa HealthCare.

Sue Gunn, head of Clinical and Business Applications at West Herts said, "This implementation is the culmination of 15 years' work around delivering patient data to the clinical staff within the Trust as and when they require it. By removing unnecessary workflow steps and making access to applications simpler, this project reflects how IT can innovate around how we support patient care in the clinical arena."

Already implemented in more than 700 healthcare organizations in North America, Europe and China, Fusionfx is a standards-based, web services oriented workflow portal that provides clinical staff with a unified view of relevant patient information by creating composite views of data from multiple sources without having to periodically synchronize the data into a new repository. This approach makes it easier for clinicians to access real-time patient data when and where it is needed, while ensuring that best practice workflows are followed during diagnosis and treatment.

"After researching the market, Carefx offered the only real-time access to patient data across different applications and to separate hospital systems. This was vital to us, as it ensures that clinicians are working from instantaneous data as they are treating patients," said Anne Reilly, Associate Director of Clinical Informatics at West Herts.

"We are thrilled to have this opportunity to partner with West Hertfordshire Hospitals NHS Trust in their quest for interoperability," said Wayne Parslow, EVP and General Manager at Carefx. "We are looking forward to helping the Trust deliver the benefits that this live portal will provide to the frontline staff using this new system, and consequently to their patients."

Nick Evans, Director for Partnerships at West Herts, said, "This project is an important one for the Trust, as it will help our clinical staff continue to treat patients in the most effective manner. The Trust fully endorses the concept of a clinical portal as providing the best positive support for the patient experience."