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Medical
Informatics Infection Control |
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North Shore–Long Island
Jewish Health System Selects TheraDoc® for Infection Control and
Disease Surveillance
Other Topics: Nursing
Informatics, Telemedicine
Server
Business Wire
February 27, 2007
DoD Grant Provides Funding to Strengthen Emergency
Preparedness
Salt Lake City, UT -- Building on its technical expertise in
healthcare emergency preparedness, the Great Neck, NY-based
North Shore-Long Island Jewish (LIJ) Health System received,
through the efforts of U.S. Representative Peter King, a grant
from the Department of Defense to expand its already extensive
emergency preparedness and bioterrorism surveillance programs. A
key component of this effort is strengthening North Shore-LIJ’s
internal surveillance and reporting capabilities regarding
infectious pathogens isolated in the health system’s
laboratories and information generated in the emergency
departments.
To support these surveillance activities as well as centralize
microbiology data from the 15-hospital health system’s various
lab systems, North Shore-LIJ has selected TheraDoc® Inc.,
www.theradoc.com, a clinical informatics company that develops
and implements real-time electronic surveillance and expert
clinical decision support systems to improve the quality and
safety of patient care at the country’s leading hospitals. |
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“In addition to
providing North Shore-LIJ with tools for hospital-based internal
infection control monitoring and reporting, TheraDoc provides a
tailor-made solution for converting our lab system’s
text-generated microbiology reports into discrete data that is
usable for a variety of surveillance and emergency preparedness
activities,” said Michael Oppenheim, MD, VP and Chief Medical
Information Officer for the North Shore-LIJ Health System.
“Their technology will allow our infection control practitioners
to spend more time on prevention and control activities as well
as allow us to move our bioterrorism surveillance program to a
new level as we implement and expand our surveillance of
infectious diseases in our hospitals and communities.”
TheraDoc’s real-time, standards-based infection control software
will eliminate the tedious manual review and collection of
microbiology and ADT reports. TheraDoc further supports these
control measures by providing tools for isolation management and
Quick Guides to educate clinical staff on procedures for
handling infected patients and preventing the spread of disease.
With TheraDoc, North Shore-LIJ will significantly expand its
surveillance systems while supporting additional management,
control and reporting capabilities – all with existing staff.
TheraDoc will also work in tandem with FirstWatch, a real-time
early warning system, in supporting key components of emergency
preparedness for North Shore-LIJ’s Center for Emergency Medical
Services in Syosset, NY. TheraDoc’s database will be leveraged
by FirstWatch to perform data mining and analysis to identify
potential outbreaks, as well as to provide graphic rendering of
geographic disease activity in addition to providing real-time
automated wireless notifications to emergency preparedness
personnel. FirstWatch will also give North Shore-LIJ the ability
to collaborate with agencies inside & outside of New York State,
in seeing aggregated real-time data related to public health and
public safety trends and patterns.
Brian O’Neil, senior VP of Emergency Medical Services, said, “In
any major outbreak, time is of the essence in containing,
isolating and treating illness. These two surveillance
platforms, working in conjunction, will provide us the ability
to see trends in real-time and respond more quickly. Using these
two platforms we can quickly graph disease management from the
point of entry into the healthcare system to the point of
discharge. Not only does this information assist us with
planning and allow us to provide quicker notifications and
response, but it makes sound medical sense from an everyday
quality perspective.”
“North Shore-LIJ Health System has developed one of our
country’s leading emergency management programs through its
Center for Emergency Medical Services,” notes TheraDoc president
and CEO, Stan Pestotnik. “We are honored to assist them in
serving the emergency preparedness needs of their network of
hospitals, as well as state, county and city agencies.”
About North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System
Headquartered in Great Neck, N.Y., the North Shore-LIJ
Health System is the nation’s third largest, non-profit, secular
healthcare system, and cares for people of all ages throughout
Long Island, Queens and Staten Island – a service area
encompassing more than five million people. The health system
includes 15 hospitals, four long-term care facilities, a medical
research institute, four trauma centers, five home health
agencies and dozens of outpatient centers. North Shore-LIJ
facilities house more than 6,000 beds, and are staffed by over
8,000 physicians, 10,500 nurses and a total workforce of about
37,500 – the largest employer on Long Island and the ninth
largest in New York City.
About TheraDoc, Inc.
TheraDoc is a clinical informatics company dedicated to
improving the quality, efficiency and safety of patient care
through enhanced clinical decision making. It provides
innovative, best-in-class solutions that improve clinical and
financial outcomes at a range of provider and payer
organizations, including some of the most-respected healthcare
institutions in the country. With clinical transparency,
TheraDoc’s technologies seamlessly place mission-critical
knowledge at the clinician’s fingertips, helping them to
confidently manage multiple processes of care across multiple
conditions and diseases. The company’s strict adherence to
medical informatics standards enables connectivity and
interoperability with any hospital’s health information systems.
Founded in 1999, TheraDoc designs, develops, and supports a
suite of clinical decision support technologies, all of which
utilize a unique inference engine that enables its real-time
capabilities. TheraDoc’s founders and core medical informatics
team are internationally recognized for their pioneering work in
medical expert systems. Their experience in clinical decision
support design and development spans two decades.
www.theradoc.com.
About FirstWatch
FirstWatch, currently deployed in 54 metro areas in North
America, is a commercial off-the-shelf (cots) situational
awareness and surveillance software system that, once configured
to work with applicable data sources, will allow authorized
users to securely monitor existing data systems for
statistically significant occurrences in user-defined
criteria—from a situational awareness, homeland security, public
health or operational standpoint.
Once a concerning volumetric or geographic trend (or pattern) is
detected, the FirstWatch system will automatically alert
user-defined personnel via email, pager, SMS (short text
message) or fax. Alerted personnel can use the real-time
FirstWatch information to determine the nature and significance
of the occurrence, and take appropriate steps to warn and
protect the public (as well as first responders), if necessary.
FirstWatch is designed to allow aggregation of data from
multiple public safety & public health agencies (with disparate
data sources) to provide authorized users with a true real-time,
regionalized situational awareness perspective across
geopolitical boundaries and operational areas.
www.firstwatch.net. |
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