MedPlus' ChartMaxx patient record system to enter British health care market

Virtual CaseNotes is a Business Process Outsourcing service where SDM will store and manage the hospital's records library. When records are required for patient consultations, they are converted to image files and returned to the hospital electronically, in advance of the patient's attendance. Clinical staff, such as doctors can then access the patient's medical record on PC's distributed around the hospital site and even remotely. SDM provides this service on a "no-capital investment" multi-year managed service contract.

The National Health Service is promoting the implementation of Information for Health, which forms the national information strategy announced by the United Kingdom Department of Health in November 1998. However, for most of the hospitals, their current database of patient information is maintained on longitudinal records known as "case-notes" and these records have to be retained for up to 30 years. This has caused growing storage and administrative problems.

Based on a number of consulting studies conducted by SDM, a typical UK acute-care hospital has an active medical records library of some 450,000 records containing 67.5 million individual pieces of paper. Each year it will produce an additional 5.5 million pages and only be able to cull or destroy 3 million pages, a net growth of 2.5 million pages. This growth often occurs because of the new computerized systems which the hospital has installed hoping to reduce paper in the first place.

The ChartMaxx enterprise-wide patient record system enables health care organisations to generate and manage a fully paperless electronic patient record which can be concurrently accessed throughout the enterprise. The system forms a multimedia data repository comprised of clinical, financial and administrative information captured from scanned paper and digital data. System features include Web-based applications, enabling physicians to review and complete the charts from remote locations via the hospital Intranet.

MedPlus Company is a publicly traded, Cincinnati-based leading provider of workflow-enabled document management systems which enable health care organisations to implement practical electronic medical records. ChartMaxx can interface with installed legacy systems to provide better care for patients, greater productivity for physicians and cost savings for hospitals. MedPlus has sold over 20 medical records systems and over 100 imaging systems to hospitals in the United States and Canada.