Are the benefits of cloud solutions for healthcare more than we realise?

Cloud solutions for healthcare

August 25, 2020

The benefits of cloud solutions for healthcare: More than we realise?

Cloud solutions for healthcare
Michelle O'Brien

Michelle O'Brien

Could the shift to cloud solutions provide the healthcare industry more benefits than we previously realised?

Cloud computing is finally changing healthcare.

The consensus on the overall benefits of the cloud for our industry appears to have shifted, which was perhaps inevitable given the increased interoperability, maturity of security and the significant cost savings cloud services provide.

However, I believe most organisations are barely scratching the surface when it comes to making the most of other benefits cloud solutions can offer. Some of the lesser known benefits, from small clinics right up to larger public health and enterprise organisations, include:

  • Improved health information exchange & interoperability
  • Predictable costs
  • Faster and more efficient scalability and fast system deployment
  • Improved backup and business continuity
  • Enhanced user experiences
  • More robust data security
  • Improvements in diagnosis and treatment through AI & Analytics
  • Easier compliance

I am a firm believer that cloud-solutions will provide healthcare organisations with even more benefits than many currently realise.

This is one of the key reasons I joined MediRecords, a leading cloud-based PMS, and why, over the next few months, I will be putting together a series of articles explaining each of the benefits listed above. Where it is relevant, I will be including examples of organisations who have achieved these benefits, and if possible, some tips on how your organisation may be able to follow these examples.

You will be able to find these articles via the MediRecords blog, via our company LinkedIn page, and via my own LinkedIn page. Feel free to send me a connection request!

In the meantime, if you are interested in finding out more about any of the above, you can always reach out to me directly, either via email ([email protected]), or on LinkedIn.

Michelle O’Brien, based in our Sydney office,  is Head of Strategy here at MediRecords.

Michelle O'Brien

Michelle O'Brien

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    MediRecords partner with The BlackDog Institute to provide cloud-based practice management software

    BlackDog Institute Logo

    August 14, 2020

    MediRecords partner with The BlackDog Institute

    MediRecords BlackDog Institute announce partnership
    Matthew Galetto MediRecords banner

    Matthew Galleto

    MediRecords partner with The BlackDog Institute to provide cloud-based practice management software

    The team at MediRecords are delighted to announce we are now working with the world-renowned BlackDog Institute.

    BlackDog, global leaders in suicide prevention research, also provide mental health advocacy, education, and treatment across Australia. They have led awareness for the increased rates of mental illness as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, and MediRecords will be further supporting their work to be more secure and accessible for patients through digital innovation.

     

     

    How will MediRecords help BlackDog?

    Put simply, by greatly improving the way they share information and data.  

    The ability to exchange information between healthcare providers securely is essential in mental health treatment – there are often multiple care providers across primary, allied, hospital and community care and the patient’s treatment can extend over a lifetime.

    Improved access breaks down barriers to care. MediRecords allows patients and clinicians to connect virtually, provides clinicians with inbuilt Telehealth, and is a full practice management system for appointments, billing, online claiming, staff rostering, client management and secure messaging.

    The bottom line is BlackDog can now manage all aspects of patient care through an online, secure practice management system. Our MediRecords solution will allow BlackDog to provide improved, accessible and timely care for patients. This will create detailed, secure and useful data that improves patient outcomes and informs better service planning for the future.

     

     

    What does this mean for MediRecords?

    This partnership represents another notable success for the team here at MediRecords, following our recently announced partnership with Healthdirect and our successful rollout across Queensland Health.

    Our Founder and CEO Matthew Galetto commented “We are very excited about partnering with the Black Dog Institute, who do such important work in suicide prevention and improving outcomes for people with Mental Health issues. We are really looking forward to supporting them in achieving their strategic goal of becoming a leader in e-health through innovative models of care.”

     

    About The BlackDog Institute

    Since their foundation in 1985, The BlackDog Institute have been at the forefront of mental health research. Rapidly evolving to drive the creation of new knowledge and ensure that clinical best practice continues to be improved and refined in line with the latest evidence.

    Today, their focus has expanded to address new challenges and opportunities in mental health – suicide prevention, digital innovation, lived experience, youth and workplace mental health. Their work in mood disorders continues through the investigation of new and better ways to treat and prevent conditions like anxiety and depression through digital tools and novel treatments.

     

    About MediRecords

    MediRecords is an Australian owned provider of cloud-based electronic medical record and practice management systems. Founded in 2014, their clients range from individual GP, specialist and allied health practices to enterprise scale healthcare providers across Australia.

    For more information please get in touch.

    Matthew Galetto MediRecords banner

    Matthew Galleto

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      MediRecords Feature Updates 2020

      Population-Patient-Level-Reporting

      August 13, 2020

      MediRecords Product Updates in 2020 so far...

      Population-Patient-Level-Reporting

      Take a look at what has happened so far in 2020…

      2020 has surely been a year of uncertainty, but you can be certain that MediRecords is still focused on delivering and implementing new and upgraded features. Our main objective is to continue to aid users in increasing and improving their workflows during these unprecedented times.
      Here are just a few of the highlights introduced to MediRecords in 2020 so far:

      SafeScript

      For our users in Victoria, SafeScript is a clinical tool that allows doctors, nurse practitioners and pharmacists to access information about their patient’s prescription history for certain high-risk medicines. This information helps clinicians make safer clinical decisions and reduces the incidence of harm, including death, from the use of pharmaceuticals.

      SafeScript Screenshot

      To find out more about SafeScript click here.

      Interest Parties

      Specialists now have the added benefit of including Interested Parties to patients’ records. This is another category of Contacts that, similar to Referrers, can be sent results, observations or any other sorts of relevant correspondence from right within the letter editor by clicking the + button. These Interested Parties can also be entered in with the Patient Details, under the Referral tab as well.

      Interest Parties Screenshot

      To find out more about Interested Parties click here.

      Create a New Procedure Within the Appointment Popup

      Specialists can now create a whole Procedural run-through straight from the Appointments screen. Including an Admission form, with all facility, assistant and inpatient information; Clinical including anaesthetic, and prosthesis inputs; and an Outcome free-form. This can be accessed by clicking the + button next to Procedure after filling in your patient and appointment details.

      How to create a new procedure within the appointment popup

       

      Invoice Item View

      Users can now Filter Invoices by Item Code. This allows you to increase your visibility on any payments, paid or unpaid, per item within the invoices of a patient record. This can be found in Accounts > Invoices.

      Invoice Item View Screenshot

       

      No Pension Number Visibility

      All Users will now have the option to add No Card to a patient records’ Pension section to increase visibility for the practice to increase a streamlined workflow when billing and claiming.

      No Pension Number Visibility Screenshot

       

      Update to the Appointments Provider Filter

      The appointment provider filter has been updated to a search bar function to give you the ability to search for specific providers rather than choosing from a list. This change has been implemented to improve the response time of the site when accessing the calendar. You can still configure your Appointment preferences to set a default collection of calendars to appear upon opening. Please follow this link for more information.

      If you need any help with any of these new features, or any others, then please don’t hesitate to contact our friendly support team via email at [email protected], on 1300 103 903 or through the chat function on your MediRecords webpage.

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        MediRecords joins VMware Standard Technology Alliance Partner Program

        MediRecords joins VMware Standard Technology Alliance Partner Program

        July 30, 2020

        MediRecords joins VMware Standard Technology Alliance Partner Program

        MediRecords joins VMware Standard Technology Alliance Partner Program
        Matthew Galetto MediRecords banner

        Matthew Galleto

        MediRecords joins VMware Standard Technology Alliance Partner Program

        We are delighted to announce that MediRecords is now a VMware Standard Technology Alliance Partner and validated to run on VMware Tanzu Kubernetes Grid Integrated Edition (TKGI).This is a fantastic achievement for our team, but many of our customers will be wondering “what does this actually mean for us?”

        Put simply, it means our software can run anywhere. Clients can implement MediRecords on-premises, in the cloud (via Google, Microsoft Azure or Amazon Web Solutions), or as a hybrid-cloud solution. And of course, we will still provide clinical practice management software to thousands of clinics in Australia through our cloud-based offering.


        VMware Tanzu Kubernetes Grid Integrated Edition enables clients to deploy and run their clinical practice management software as a containerized workload across private and public clouds. The flexibility of Kubernetes allows our clients to simplify the management of services and infrastructure in a highly scalable, highly available way so they can focus on running their practice.

        “Our partnership with VMware as a Technology Alliance Partner provides even greater flexibility to our customers,” said Matthew Galetto, MediRecords founder and CEO. “We have an excellent track record when it comes to enterprise-scale projects, rolling out Australia-wide solutions to thousands of users in a matter of days.”


        With VMware Tanzu Kubernetes Grid Integrated Edition, larger enterprises can maintain their IT investments to deploy MediRecords on existing on-premises infrastructure or leverage the greater flexibility of running their practice management solution on a public or hybrid-cloud. MediRecords has invested heavily in the development of operational capability, infrastructure as a code, automation and testing to support businesses when implementing their practice management solution as a containerized workload.

        Our partnership with VMware will specifically benefit our enterprise and government customers with existing IT infrastructure investments that they want to deploy their MediRecords solutions on. For smaller clinics, MediRecords will continue to provide cloud-based practice management systems to thousands of users in GP, Specialist and Allied Health practices. These products offer a turnkey solution for small to medium sized practices and larger corporate groups that are growing their businesses. Customers benefit from the speed & scalability offered by a true cloud application offered as Software as a Service.


        About MediRecords

        MediRecords is an Australian owned provider of cloud-based electronic medical record and practice management systems. Founded in 2013, their clients range from individual GP, specialist and allied health practices to enterprise scale healthcare providers across Australia.

        For more information contact [email protected].

        VMware is a registered trademark of VMware, Inc. in the United States and other jurisdictions. All other marks and names mentioned herein may be trademarks of their respective companies.

        Matthew Galetto MediRecords banner

        Matthew Galleto

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          Experience 100 % Pure Cloud.

          July 19, 2021

          Experience 100% pure cloud

          Across our country thousands of practices, including GP’s, specialist and allied health, own and maintain a practice server. The practice server is the powerhouse of the clinic, the primary function of which is to host the clinical and practice management software. Other critical functions include the hosting of a myriad of add-ons and plugins that connect to, and extract from the practice management software.

          As a secondary function, the practice server often operates as a file server to store business documents or often as a file repository for incoming faxes. It can also have accounting software installed or be used as an email service for programs such as Microsoft Exchange.

          There is no doubt that the practice server is a critical piece of infrastructure and central to the successful operations of a clinic.

          Wow that’s a lot of importance on what can be a single point of failure. If the practice server goes down, what does that mean for my business?

          As a practice owner,  you need to ask these questions:

          • Have I invested sufficiently in maintaining the security and backups of my practice IT systems given how important they are to my business operations?
          • Is the hardware that I purchased still in warranty?
          • Is my aging hardware performing as well as it should. Are the outages and system crashes my doctors are experiencing avoidable?
          • Is my information being backed up and taken offline each day and can it be restored?
          • How many different applications are actually running on my servers and what data is being accessed or extracted?
          • When was the last time the practice IT systems were audited for vulnerabilities?
          • How much is all this costing? 

          As a practice owner, you should be able to go home at night with a piece of mind, without having to worry about any of these things. Well you can!

          MediRecords has partnered with Stanfield IT to provide a 100% Pure Cloud Experience. Stanfield IT can help in the transformation of your practice to the cloud by assisting with the digital transformation of your accounting, email, file and clinical and practice management systems by moving these services to the Australian cloud service providers.

          To find out more, contact MedIRecords on 1300 103 903 or email us at [email protected]. For more information regarding Stanfield IT, please visit https://www.stanfieldit.com/healthcare-it/  

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