Cambio goes openEHR with CDS Apps

Industry News | Nov. 9, 2017, 4:19 p.m.

Cambio Healthcare Systems is further strengthening the openEHR vision with the UK launch of its openEHR based clinical decision support (CDS) platform.

Speaking at the EHI Live conference at Birmingham’s NEC in October, Cambio’s Wiqas Valji revealed plans to build content through community driven developments.

Cambio's pharmacist consultant told delegates that giving clinical communities open access to Cambio's CDS apps will remove the 'vendor barrier' and fast-track developments, allowing users to quickly build clinical content that can be shared with other clinicians and groups.

As clinicians, we want to see every patient receive the best possible care at the first opportunity, and this means care that encompasses the very latest clinical guidelines,” Valji said. “It can take years for new tech developments to become best practice. And, current systems do not easily allow for interoperability, which is wholly unacceptable and puts lives at risk.” 

Valji also gave more details of two key projects, including the partnership with NHS Scotland supplying a national clinical decision support system for all of the country’s 14 health boards and 960 GP practices.

For NHS Scotland, a ‘vendor neutral’ solution that works with any EHR was paramount. Other key requirements included an open standards-based architecture for communities to build content, rules authoring allowing users to localise rules, and for the apps to run on any platform or mobile device. 

A pilot phase started in Autumn 2017 with full rollout expected in 2018, but the app is already driving improvements in Sweden, Valji told his audience. A project with Linköping University Hospital in the Östergötland region saw the development of Cambio’s first intervention app for stroke prevention.

The app, he said, runs in the background checking adherence to clinical guidelines for a patient in real time and then presents the doctor with recommendations, if the treatment is insufficient or incorrect.

It’s calculated that even a 10 per cent improvement in compliance gives an annual saving of  £2.35 million, based on Östergötland’s population of half a million.

Valji explained that Cambio’s CDS app extracts data from any EHR seamlessly and will return an alert if certain pre-defined conditions are triggered. But he also warned of ‘alert fatigue’ and the importance of embedding alerts in clinical workflow. “It’s vital for clinicians to receive and review alerts as part of their actual workflow within the EHR and not have to faff about logging into other systems.”






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