Unscheduled and Emergency Care
Go Live of Symphony in Three Hospital Emergency Departments
Introduction:
An upgrade to the Symphony ICT system used in the Emergency Departments of Connolly Hospital, Naas General Hospital and St. Columcille’s has been completed.
EMIS Health, based in the UK, provides the Symphony software and provides support 24 hours over 365 days.
The software is used in both the Emergency Departments (ED) and in the Acute Medical Assessment Departments (AMAU). It interfaces with IMS Maxims PAS in Naas and in St. Columcille’s and IPMS in Connolly hospital, all via HL7 messaging.
Challenges:
Despite a series of significant challenges impacting the project including the cyber-attack on the Health Service Executive, a SAN (Storage Area Network) outage and the COVID-19 pandemic, alongside the limited availability of key Emergency Department staff.
The project successfully concluded at the end of November 2023 thanks to the dedication of the local hospital teams and several eHealth teams and with Liz Corr acting as Project Manager for Unscheduled and Emergency Care.
Benefits:
An additional software component, designed to complement Symphony, has been successfully completed. This software streamlines the process of scanning all Emergency Department (ED) paper records, indexing them, and subsequently aligning them with the corresponding patient records stored on the Symphony platform.
Previously, the three hospitals operated on a shared, server structure, resulting in simultaneous system downtime across all three sites. Now, each hospital has its own independent Windows 2019 server environment, eliminating the synchronization issues experienced in the past.
Conclusion:
This transformative upgrade promises improved efficiency and data management, underscoring the resilience and adaptability of healthcare professionals in advancing patient care.
For more information you can view the unscheduled care and emergency care webpage here or contact Brian Dunne, ICT Programme Manager, eHealth - Brian Dunne