A better tomorrow
Digital transformations
Smart EMHS – refreshing our digital roadmap
The global digital revolution is presenting ever-growing opportunities in the way we interact with our community, staff and partners.
Analytics, artificial intelligence (AI) and cognitive technologies, combined with traditional care, can help us create a health service that is interconnected and capable of intelligent automated actions.
In March 2024, the EMHS Board approved a refreshed Smart EMHS Digital Strategy to guide our evolution through to 2030.
Expanding on a road map first put in place in 2019, it has 7 key areas for transformation and will call on technologies that came to the fore during the COVID-19 pandemic and social distancing, when digital communication and services became a lifeline.
The key areas are data and analytics, innovation, AI and automation, cyber security, user experience, communications and consumer experience.
The strategy builds on existing ground-breaking initiatives such as our Health in a Virtual Environment (HIVE) remote monitoring system.
Some of the areas we are focused on include robotic process automation for repetitive tasks such as data entry and claims processing, automated machine learning harnessing analytics to help manage clinical outcomes, and continued advances in virtual health care and monitoring.
Our new Community and Virtual Care Innovation Directorate and an ‘ideas’ Innovation Hub, with the existing Data and Digital Innovation Team, are central to our continued digital advancement.
Smart EMHS complements the broader WA Health Digital Strategy and aims to drive better health outcomes for all Western Australians.
Let’s Prevent Digital Solution
Let’s Prevent Digital Solution is a digital health program aimed at improving overall health and reducing the risk of chronic disease.
EMHS, in collaboration with Diabetes WA, piloted this innovative digital initiative with EMHS staff and their families between October 2023 and February 2024.
The aim of this pilot was to support staff and their families of all health literacy levels, to make positive changes to prevent the onset of chronic conditions and to support overall health and wellbeing. It was about individuals finding what worked best for them to make positive change through the interactive and self-paced approach.
Overall, there were 123 registrations to the digital health program, with the evaluation process currently underway.
Modernising medical records across our sites
Armadale Health Service (AHS) and Kalamunda Hospital (KH) switched from paper to digital medical records in 2023-24, as Royal Perth Hospital (RPH) and Bentley Health Service (BHS) prepared to follow. This change also includes associated community mental health services.
The introduction of the Digital Medical Records (DMR) system at EMHS is part of a broader statewide move to modernise patient care in public health services in WA and make it more sustainable.
The DMR system came online on 25 October 2023 as part of stage one of the WA Health Electronic Medical Record Program under the WA Health Digital Strategy 2020-2030.
The system lets clinicians both input and access important patient information at the point of care, resulting in more coordinated and efficient treatment for patients.
Since the system was introduced, more than one million digital records have been created and the group is on track to hit 2 million by 2025.
AKG Executive Director Neil Cowan said the change was carefully planned and led by the DMR team.
“We had excellent support from the DMR project team, great engagement from our hard-working medical records staff who faced the most change and an impressive staff DMR training score of about 90 per cent,” Neil said.
“These all helped make for a smooth transition, and I am very proud of how hard our staff worked in collaboration to the benefit of the consumers we serve.”
Benefits have included patient records being available at the point of care, including 88 mobile workstations, and to multiple users at the same time. Reduced medical records storage has also led to financial and carbon footprint savings.
Meanwhile, RPH and BHS this year commenced the groundwork for its digital changeover.
The successful introduction of DMR across EMHS will have us well placed for the adoption of an even more sophisticated electronic medical record system with increased capabilities in the future.
Shaping service delivery
During 2023-24, St John of God Midland Public Hospital (SJGMPH) progressively rolled out 2 ICT initiatives – Kyra Flow and Med-Tasker.
The introduction of Kyra Flow digital patient journey board and Med-Tasker – a mobile communication and task management platform – enables caregivers to make important patient flow decisions using near real time capacity data.
The 2 digital transformation initiatives aim to optimise patient flow, and provide real time task visibility and allocation. This ultimately supports timely patient care provision, as well as discharge planning.
Strengthening our cyber defences
The crucial role of incident response
Cyber security is part of our digital age and to keep our patients, staff and organisation safe our training goes beyond prevention to incident response drills.
As part of developing our cyber incident response capability, EMHS Board members, executives, members of the cyber team and department representatives, took part in simulation exercises during the year.
Cyber threats were created at random, requiring our top-level staff to respond and mitigate them.
The drills were part of our cyber incident response plan which governs our processes and technologies for detecting and responding to cyber-attacks, security breaches and cyber threats.
EMHS Chief Cyber Security Officer Helen McLeish said it was important to be prepared.
“It’s vital that we not only develop responses to cyber-attacks, but that we then put those responses to the test to see how they hold up in a ‘real-life’ situation,” Helen said.
“Cyber threats are ever-present. As a health service provider, and as individuals, we all have a part to play when it comes to cyber security.”
Kalamunda tops cyber awareness
National Cyber Security Awareness Month in October 2023 was a chance for KH staff to show their cyber smarts.
Throughout the month, our Cyber Security Team released weekly quizzes across all our sites – and KH was more than up for the challenge.
At the end of the month, staff at the hospital were named our most cyber aware.
The KH team completed the most cyber security weekly quizzes across EMHS and achieved 100 per cent compliance on mandatory cyber security training.
By helping raise awareness of cyber security and generating discussion among staff, the quizzes are a fun part of our proactive approach to digital security through education and continuous monitoring.
