Norway Launches Regional Cancer Care With Mediware

Sept. 21, 2015 - PRLog -- The South-Eastern Norway Regional Health Authority,Helse Sør-Øst RHF,have signed a deal to roll out Mediware’s Chemotherapy Management System (CMS) across its 17 health trusts, satellite clinics and seven chemotherapy production pharmacies in order to help improve the quality of cancer care and patient safety across the whole region.

The contract award directly to Mediware underpins Helse Sør-Øst RHF’s‘Digital Modernisation Initiative – for Improved Patient Safety and Quality of Care’. It also spearheads a new regional shared-services programme for the standardisation and consolidation of technologies with the aim of improving accessibility to healthcare for the 2.8 million population living in the region.

Norway’s mountainous landscape and snowy winters make travelling and accessing health services difficult all year round. After world-wide research, Mediware’s CMS solution was identified by Helse Sør-Øst RHFas offering a unique set of capabilities - including meeting their key requirement of a truly regional solution capable of supporting the delivery of cancer care to patients irrespective of where they reside.

By taking a regional approach, Helse Sør-Øst RHFaims to improve the cancer patients’ experience by eliminating the need to travel regularly to a main treatment facility for their weekly chemotherapy treatments and for follow up assessments. Their medication can be prepared in any of one of the region’s seven pharmacy production units for local delivery. In addition, the regional solution enables multi-disciplinary teams of professionals to remotely monitor the progress of patients’ treatment and make adjustments to their medication.

Commenting on the deal with Mediware, CEOat Helse Sør-Øst RHF, Cathrine M. Lofthus,said: “This is an important project for South-Eastern Regional Health Authority, and part of our strategy to establish common, standardised regional solutions that will directly improve patient safety and quality of care.”

Mediware’s CMS is one of the few systems that can truly support paperless or paper-light aseptic compounding in the chemotherapy pharmacy. CMS can also be configured for gravimetric production using digital weigh scales and bar coding technology. The oncology pharmacists working within the aseptic unit’s isolator cabinet can connect any (approved) digital weigh scales to weigh the product ingredients, rather than measuring them by volume, which further automates the pharmacy workflow, reduces risk and improves safety.

Mediware B.V.’s Charles Avé noted: “While a lot of traditional chemotherapy electronic prescribing systems may be good for doctors and for nurses, they fall short in managing the patient’s safety. The safety-critical compounding and production aspect needs to be closely linked up with prescribing and administering. If these are not all fully aligned and integrated, opportunities are left wide open throughout the patient journey and the hospital work-flow for errors to creep in. CMS closes down all of those potential error-points and makes for a much safer ‘closed-loop’ system, which can easily be validated to the latest GAMP5 standard - which is the international gold standard for quality and safety.”

“We are delighted to welcome Norway to our growing family of Mediware Medicine Management users. The CMS contract with Helse Sør-Øst RHF is a strategic new business win and puts our innovative CMS solution squarely onto the map against established competition. We already have over 12 sites using CMS in the Netherlands and Belgium and in the last few months we’ve won four contracts to implement CMS in leading NHS oncology hospitals in England. This Helse Sør-Øst RHF contract, along with the others recently won in England, are significant votes of confidence in our product and Mediware’s track record for successful implementations,” Avé concluded.

The system is expected to be rolled out for operational use before the end of 2016. Mediware will lead the initial implementations across two production units which support three localities before Helse Sør-Øst RHF takes responsibility for deployment throughout the rest of the region with technical support from Mediware. The roll out of CMS will form a blueprint for Helse Sør-Øst RHF to follow when rolling out other future regional clinical systems as a shared regional service fully integrated to its enterprise-wide electronic patient record/journal (EPR/EPJ) systems.

About Mediware BV
Mediware Netherlands is part of the Mediware Inc. Group – a leading, global provider of specialised healthcare solutions with over four decades of experience developing and delivering innovative software designed to ensure the highest level of safety and efficiency.

For more information about Mediware BV products and services, visit our website at www.mediware.nl.

About Mediware Information Systems inc
Mediware delivers interoperable best-of-breed software systems that improve efficiencies and address safety concerns, enabling healthcare organisations to improve care processes while decreasing costs.

Core Mediware solutions include blood management technologies for hospitals and blood centres; cell therapy solutions for cord blood banks, cancer treatment centres and research facilities; medication management solutions for hospitals, behavioural health facilities, infusion and specialty pharmacy providers; business intelligence-based performance management solutions for clinical, regulatory and financial aspects of the broader healthcare market; and rehabilitation therapy and respiratory care solutions.

For more information about Mediware products and services, visit our website at www.mediware.com.