Navy Uses Intrahealth To Help Get Sailors Fit

Tue, 6 Aug 2002

Navy Uses Intrahealth To Help Get Sailors Fit For Sea

The Navy can now provide medical assessments to sailors preparing for duty at home and overseas more quickly and efficiently with the help of an integrated clinical software system from Intrahealth.

The Devonport-based Navy Hospital, which services more than 2,000 sailors, is using Intrahealth's "Profile" practice management solution to provide seamless integration and functionality for its electronic health records, front-desk administration and financial reporting.

The first phase of the project, which involved installing Profile at the hospital and training clinical staff, was completed 1 July 2002, and the Navy is already recognising the benefits of using the system.

The Deputy Director of Naval Medicine, Lieutenant Commander Antony Griffin, says Profile will help the Navy manage its medical operations more efficiently, which is really important for an organisation that can be called to provide assistance at a moment's notice.

Lt Cdr Griffin says that sailors must go through rigorous pre-deployment medical evaluations to ensure they are medically fit to carry out their responsibilities at home or abroad. Part of this evaluation may involve vaccination treatment before deploying to places like East Timor or Afghanistan, where disease may be a risk to sailors.

"The Intrahealth system shows us when sailors last received their vaccinations and who will need them prior to the deployment, so that we can get everyone vaccinated as soon as possible," says Lt Cdr Griffin.

"We can provide a list of medically fit sailors to our operational headquarters and ships' captains in a matter of minutes, so that sailors can depart for their missions without delay."

Lt Cdr Griffin says that the Navy previously relied on a combination of paper-based and electronic systems to compile this information, which could take a significantly longer time to prepare, especially as people move around to different jobs within the Navy and their paper-based records may be in transit when they need to be accessed.

The mobile nature of naval operations is another reason why the Intrahealth solution was selected. Profile was the only practice management system that could extract information from the Navy's multiple data sources and consolidate it with the Navy's electronic health records. This will be of increased importance when the system is rolled out to the Navy's fleet, which is expected to begin later this year.

"Profile currently extracts and consolidates information that is held within the Navy's corporate database, which holds our human resources records," says Lt Cdr Griffin. "This means that if a sailor gets promoted or moves to another unit, then this new information will be reflected in the medical records held within Profile. And when the ships are linked to the system, the crews' clinical records will also be transferred and consolidated to ensure timely access to accurate information for those who need it."

The Navy is running the latest version of Profile, and their use of the system is also serving as a pilot project to determine whether all New Zealand Defence units will standardise on Intrahealth technology. Other medical units of the army and air force are already running earlier versions of Profile.

ENDS

*** About Intrahealth Established in 1997 by medical doctors, Intrahealth is a New Zealand owned and operated company that develops integrated and flexible clinical systems for the healthcare industry. Intrahealth's family of products includes Profile, for integrated practice management and clinical records; InSync, for health systems management; and Accession, for facilitating patients' online access to health professionals. For more information please visit www.intrahealth.com.

*** For more information, please contact: Dr. Kannan Subramaniam, Business Development and Communiations, Intrahealth: 021 804 414 or

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