The State Government’s announcement of a $255 million investment in Victoria’s largest public hospital, the Austin and Repatriation Medical Centre will cement its reputation as one of Australia’s leading teaching, training and research facilities.

As part of the investment programme, a new computer system, TrakCare was piloted in the emergency department of the A&RMC. The pilot programme has involved 230 staff throughout the hospital who deal with the emergency department ranging from patient accounts and patient services to radiology, pharmacy, IT, and human resources.

The TrakCare solution was implemented following a period of design and preliminary testing and is developed and supplied by
Trak Systems Pty Limited, of Sydney Australia.

Key to the selection of TrakCare was the capacity to provide a comprehensive hospital wide Electronic Patient Record. Traditionally hospital information systems have been developed around the financial model. More recently advanced systems such as TrakCare have evolved to be centred on the patient’s medical records utilizing one complete set of data viewed as appropriate by healthcare professionals in a controlled and secure environment.

According to Ms Vicki Moritz, Application Projects Manager for Information Technology at A&RMC:
"After an exhaustive consultative process the Austin and Repatriation Medical Centre chose the TrakCare solution because of:
o Extensive integrated clinical functionality
o Integration of administrative and clinical systems in one solution
o Web based product design
o Availability of point of care technology with the TrakMate product
o Extensive functionality across department or functional areas such as Emergency, theatre, Laboratory will reduce the need for interfacing.
o Cost effectiveness of the solution
o Functionality and cost effectiveness of the Caché database from InterSystems
o ODBC connectivity and Hyperindex tools to allow ease of data mining, particularly for clinical and research purposes.
o Excellent reference reports from installed sites. "
Implementation at the Austin and Repatriation Medical Centre continues with clinical functionality planned and approved for various pilot areas by the end of 2001.

The Austin and Repatriation Medical Centre currently operates more than 830 beds and treats approximately 66700 inpatients and 120,000 outpatients per annum in Victoria, Australia.

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