TELUS Health to Support Newfoundland and Labrador in Expansion of the Newfoundland and Labrador Electronic Health Record (NL EHR)

MONTREAL, May 30, 2012 /CNW/ - TELUS Health today announced it has signed an agreement with the Newfoundland & Labrador Centre for Health Information (the Centre) to support the next phase in the province's deployment of an interoperable Electronic Health Record (iEHR).

The Centre's interoperable Electronic Health Record/Labs (iEHR/Labs) program is the next phase in Newfoundland & Labrador's implementation of an iEHR and will make important health information available to clinicians across the province. This new agreement continues the working relationship developed between the Centre and TELUS Health, which drew extensively on TELUS' technology capability to begin deploying the Pharmacy Network. The Pharmacy Network project delivered a core component of an EHR with the Health Information Access Layer (HIAL), in addition to a drug repository that connects the community pharmacies. The iEHR/Labs program will leverage this technology to support the additional iEHR information domains and components that will be implemented through this next phase.

"We are extremely pleased to continue our successful relationship with the Centre and work with the province of Newfoundland & Labrador on such an important initiative," says Glenn De Roy, vice president of Health Delivery Solutions for TELUS Health Solutions. "Deploying iEHR will give authorized health professionals secure, real-time access to critical health information, ensuring that Newfoundlanders receive better, more efficient care delivery."

In 2009, the Centre began deploying the Pharmacy Network, which connects pharmacies with a central, province-wide Drug Information System. Since then, more than 75 pharmacies have joined, covering more than 185,000 patients (about 34% of the province's population). The network currently contains 2.9 million medication dispense records, a figure which is increasing daily. More importantly, there have been more than 27,000 instances of shared information, meaning a pharmacist had access to additional information in delivering care to their client.

Designed and created by TELUS Health to meet Canada Health Infoway EHR Blueprint specifications, the HIAL, as a core component of the NL EHR, manages interactions between clinical systems (pharmacy management systems, hospital information system, physician EMRs, etc.), provincial repositories (drug, lab, shared health records, etc.) and provincial registries (client, provider, location and user). In addition to providing the first version of the HIAL contained within the Pharmacy Network, TELUS Health also provided the provincial Drug Information System, a medication management portal and a data warehouse. Since 2009, TELUS Health has also worked in partnership with the Centre in supporting the Pharmacy Network's production environment, through its managed services offering.

As part of the iEHR/Labs program, TELUS Health will extend HIAL services to include support for additional HL7 messages to support Lab and Shared Health Record interactions. A service will be added to manage the clinical terminologies associated with the expanded set of health information.  TELUS Health will also leverage its strategic relationship with HIPAAT to integrate HIPAAT's leading Privacy eSuite consent management service into the HIAL, which will add patient-centered privacy protection to all healthcare information. Committed to industry standards, TELUS Health will continue to align the solution to Canada Health Infoway's vision and standards.

TELUS Health will work with the Centre and other members of the project team to begin deployment of the new technology in 2013.

About TELUS Health
TELUS Health is a leader in telehealth, electronic health records, remote patient monitoring, mobile home and community care, consumer health, benefits management and pharmacy management. Our solutions give health authorities, providers, physicians, patients and consumers the power to turn information into better health outcomes. For more information about TELUS Health, please visit www.telushealth.com.

Janice Murray
TELUS Health
416-487-5007
[email protected]