Wellsoft finds new EDIS business in Canada

Here is Health Data Management’s weekly roundup of health information technology contracts and implementations.

Emergency department information systems vendor Wellsoft has a substantial new contract with 567-bed Grand River Hospital in Kitchener, Ontario. The Canadian ER serves about 65,000 patients annually in a service area with a population of 700,000. Funding for the EDIS came through a donation from BlackBerry founders Mike and Ophelia Lazaridis. The EDIS will integrate with existing and future clinical systems.

Carrus Hospital, a 40-bed specialty facility in Sherman, Texas, is adding more technology from Nuance Communications. The hospital already has clinical documentation software from the vendor and is adding the Nuance Power PDF software to reduce paperwork and time involved working with PDF documents. Its previous PDF software was not user-friendly. Cost savings will be directed to another project, a secure messaging system.



Patients benefiting from the Great Lakes Health Connect health information exchange in Michigan now will be able consent to donate biospecimens to researchers as part of the Precision Medicine Initiative. The HIE has contracted with vendor iSpecimen, enabling researchers to use their electronic health record system to view and select specific samples in real-time, as well as get patients’ medical histories upon consent. Great Lakes Health Connect participants manage more than 90 percent of hospital beds in the state and have more than 7 million individual patient records, according to iSpecimen.

Meditech has two new contracts. St. Claire Regional Medicine Center in Morehead, Ky., has been a client since 2009 and now is adding the vendor’s web ambulatory, acute and emergency department information systems. Mary Rutan Hospital, a 45-bed facility in Bellefontaine, Ohio, will upgrade to Meditech’s 6.1 EHR platform, which is the latest version.

Bumrungrad International Hospital in Bangkok, Thailand, will implement the web-based TrakCare electronic health record system, including patient administrative functions, and the HealthShare inoperability software of InterSystems. A next-generation pathology laboratory information system from the vendor also is going in to support an effort to become a fully digital facility. The hospital serves about 1.1 million patients annually, half of them being international patients.