Dear Colleagues,
UHN is very close to the final phase of a process which will see us choose a new, integrated and comprehensive electronic patient record that will transform the way we work. This is exhilarating - and a bit unnerving - because we will be putting a new system in place throughout UHN – inpatient and ambulatory, while also working to fully integrate research interests as we go.
Hundreds of people at UHN have lent their time and expertise to help review proposals and attend product demonstrations from a variety of companies. Over the next few years, everyone at UHN will have a role to play in making this new system a reality and soon, about 150 people will be asked to step forward as part of the implementation team. When people see what the future looks like with a modern, fully integrated electronic system, the excitement is evident - as is the realization that this will be a huge, UHN-wide commitment.
The benefits as we see them:
- Support in transforming UHN from patient-centred care to an approach where patients are partners in their care, including providing them electronic access to their records
- Help UHN to be a world leader in documenting and improving outcomes for patients through the collection, analysis and application of information
- Give the people of UHN the ability to provide more care because our systems will help make us more efficient in the use of our resources
- Enable the use of clinical data for research in a seamless way
- Provide UHN with information as it happens, rather than at month's end, quarterly or the end of the year
In the next few weeks Human Resources will be putting the call out to all UHN employees about the opportunities on the implementation team. These people will be critical to UHN's success and they will help lead the way to this future state. HR is working on job descriptions and the process we will use to build our implementation team. We want our team to reflect the broad array of backgrounds and talents that make up our team because this group of people will be central to UHN's success in the future and our desire to provide all of our patients with the very best health care that we can envision.
Bob, Lydia and Charlie
