Medical Objects messaging proves to be a broadband winner in the Eastern Goldfields

Monday 17 October 2005

Conducted during the first week of October, the successful trial paves the way for broader adoption of simple, ‘plug-in’ medical messaging around Australia. 

Dr Andrew McIntyre, Chief Executive Officer, Medical Objects said that the vast distances involved in the Eastern Goldfields Regional Reference Site highlighted the considerable benefits of real-time, secure transmission of medical reports over the Internet. 

A total of 50 GPs and 3 specialists participated in the Medical Objects trial in the Eastern Goldfields Region sending a total of 65 real clinical specialist reports in the first 3 days. Specialists include a general surgeon, obstetrician & gynaecologist, and pediatrician.  

By using the Medical Objects software, GPs in the trial sent digitally signed HeSA PKI referrals direct to specialists. 

Dr Andrew Siegmund, GP Project Manager for the Eastern Goldfields Regional Reference Site, said that the medical messaging is an ideal application to trial as it has the potential to lead to better communication between health professions and better patient outcomes.  

“With the service GPs can receive reports from local Specialists in real time across an area equivalent to one-third of WA.” 

The messaging trial is being supported by the Eastern Goldfields Medical Division of Practice as part of the Eastern Goldfields Regional Reference Site (EGRRS) project under the Australian Government Department of Health and Ageing’s Broadband for Health Programme.  

Developed by specialists on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast, where it now covers 95% of local GPs, Medical Objects was the first messaging service and organization in Australia to receive Australian Standards AS4700.2 HL7 v2.3.1 certification, awarded by the National Association of Testing Authorities (NATA) approved Australian Healthcare Messaging Laboratory (AHML).

“The use of HL7 as a real-time “on the wire” protocol, in a similar way as HTML is used on the Internet, makes our applications as scalable and distributed as the World Wide Web”.  

“The use of HL7 also ensures that the Medical Objects’ applications provide reliable and acknowledged transmission of clinical patient information”.  

The preliminary results of the Medical Objects trial in the Eastern Goldfields confirm the extremely positive outcomes of similar trials conducted in South-east Queensland over the last year. Further Medical Objects trials are also planned for Geelong and Canberra. 

 “The 500 doctors who now use Medical Objects on the Sunshine Coast are benefiting from vastly improved communications”,  

GPs receive gastroenterology reports within minutes of completion of their patients’ procedures, before the patient wakes up from their anaesthesia. Fast information delivery can alert surgeons to high priority patients so that they can be seen the same day during their hospital rounds. 

“We have practice systems now with 250,000 results in them and on appropriate hardware millions of reports could be supported”,  

“Our distributed approach, which does not require large investments in centralized systems, is consistent with recent trends in IT systems and services  

“The standards based open architecture lends itself to simpler interoperability with existing systems in GP, specialist and hospital, and laboratory settings”, Dr McIntyre said.

Messaging through Medical Objects allows for data transmission without loss of meaning, enabling computer assisted analysis of clinical data.

 “The specialist, and the patient, can see the full picture generated by a range of tests taken at different times, on a single screen view”, Dr McIntyre said.

For more information please contact Emma Nicol or Trevor Cook at Jackson Wells Morris on
02 990 44 333.

Established in 2002, and led by a practicing specialist physician, the Sunshine Coast based software company has led the way in the use of an object orientated framework to build a robust, secure and scalable architecture that provides an easy to use and fast interface for secure messaging between healthcare professionals. Medical Objects is an Open Architecture standards based system.