Canterbury in particular offers an ideal example to corroborate the claim that healthcare IT integration works best if accompanied by an integrated overall approach to medical care, as reported in HIMSS Insights.
Plans were already in place to install a centralized shared medical record that could be accessed from information systems of care providers, hospitals, and the community nursing agency but progress was slow. Then came February 2011 and New Zealand experienced one of the worst earthquakes in generations – many general practitioner (GP) paper-based archives were either lost or temporarily unavailable but Canterbury hospital’s electronic documentation remained accessible all the way through.
Image Courtesy of Vichaya Kiatying-Angsulee / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
