University of Sydney leads the way in hospital technology

But a new electronic system developed by the University of Sydney's School of Information Technologies and introduced at the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital (RPAH) is designed to lead to better patient care, fewer hospital errors and allow researchers to search thousands of medical records.

The Ward Rounds Information System (WRIS) is the first example of the use of natural language processing in patient care at the bedside in Australia.

It was developed by Jon Patrick, Chair of Language Technology and a Eureka Prize winner. It is based on an innovative computer program called SNOMED which can translate medical notes and inconsistent descriptions into clear and concise patient information. Another program allows doctors and researchers to search for similar records between patients.

Professor Patrick said the University was leading the world in developing the technology. "This is evidenced by the fact that the Mayo Clinic in the United States is collaborating with the RPAH and University of Sydney to make these technologies available in their hospitals," he said.

The system provides the doctor with a tailored extract of the patient's clinical record on a screen. Progress notes are analysed by the computer program and records are indexed so that staff can retrieve particular cases or notes within a case, in the same way that Google finds relevant content across the Internet.

The system is designed to give better treatment for patients, improve the efficiency of record keeping and save hundreds of hours of doctors' time.

Dr Robert Herkes, director of the hospital's intensive care unit demonstrated the WRIS, using a critically ill 34-year-old pneumonia patient.

"He's an exceedingly complicated patient. Before, the nurses and doctors would have copied the data from the electronic system into the paper template. That has disadvantages with transcription errors - maybe they would have written his blood pressure as 170 on 55 instead of 155 on 70.

"Also, calculations such as how much urine the patient had passed, or how much fluid the patient has received, could be transcribed incorrectly.

"Now all his observations, along with the laboratory data, are electronically captured into the WRIS system," said Dr Herkes.

The electronically captured medical information will also give researchers and doctors easy access to thousands of medical records.

"Say Mrs Jones has had a major stroke. We can go back and look at every patient we've had in our hospital who's had a major stroke and have a better idea of her predicted outcome," said Dr Herkes.

"Here at RPAH we assume we are cutting edge, but that is an assumption. This new system will let us test that assumption."

Dr Herkes added: "Health IT isn't well-funded. Not much is spent on R&D. That's why we're comfortable that we have this support from the University, otherwise we would never get this sort of R&D going."