South Metropolitan Health Service is digitizing its pre-surgery programme
South Metropolitan Health Service in Western Australia began digitizing its pre-surgery program three years after launch.
It recently awarded a tender to Personify Care to supply, host and provide ongoing support for a SaaS application that will support the LifeFit-SurgFit program. “The solution will enable patients to receive ppatient health questionnaires and assist them during their surgical journey. The aim is for the solution to enable patients to be fit for surgery and fit for life through early screening and targeted patient pathways,” the tender said.
WHY IT MATTERS
SMHS, which provides hospital and community-based public healthcare services in the southern metropolis of Perth, launched LifeFit SurgFit in 2020-2021 as a ‘holistic approach’ to preparing patients for surgery.
“Patients are supported throughout their surgical journey by a multidisciplinary team providing health and wellness tools that people can integrate into their lifestyle in the lead-up to surgery, including education through a dedicated SurgFit school,” a spokesperson for the organization explained. Healthcare IT news.
The program was first offered to patients undergoing ENT, head and neck surgery and later expanded to patients undergoing upper gastrointestinal and colorectal surgery. It was initially implemented without a digital platform.
THE BIG TREND
SMHS chose to go with Personify Care’s digital solution in part because of its “track record of delivering prehabilitation, pre-operative and post-discharge pathways across other Australian tertiary public health services,” the spokesperson shared. Most recently, the technology company helped implement the so-called surgical pre-rehabilitation program My Prehab at Central Adelaide Local Health Network
Cybersecurity is a major consideration in all digitalization projects. The digital pathways were made available at the end of last year received by Personify Care to CALHN and Southern Adelaide Local Health Network hit by a cyber attack, resulting in the deletion of a folder containing the health information of 121 patients. Forensic analysis still cannot determine the reason behind the hack.
As far as SMHS is concerned, Personify Care’s platform still met cybersecurity requirements during a proof of concept demonstration. In addition, it was recently certified with ISO 27001:2022, the highest certification level for enterprise information security.
Once validated in the LifeFit SurgFit program, the spokesperson said their use of Personify Care’s platform can be expanded to other clinical pathways, including non-surgical pathways such as endoscopy.
ON THE RECORD
“By delivering this model of care (pre-operative services) through digital patient pathways, we will aim to increase the reach of the program to more patients across the SMHS and provide the multidisciplinary team with early insight into the key clinical indicators needed to provide targeted patient care. routes,” the SMHS spokesperson said.