University Times

In an effort to put critical patient information in the hands of physicians at the bedside, UPMC announced that it has developed its first electronic health record application for BlackBerry smartphones. The pilot project gives physicians access to such information as a patient’s allergies, current medications and recently completed lab tests.

William Fera, vice president, medical technologies, and medical director, interoperability, at UPMC , explained: “We are looking for more effective ways to make patient information available at the point of care — and, increasingly, the point of care isn’t just in a hospital or doctor’s office. We need to get the right information to the right clinicians at the right time, whether they are at home ‘on call’ or in a variety of mobile health care situations.”

UPMC’s  application  for BlackBerry smartphones is enabled by the health system’s interoperability platform, created by technology partner dbMotion. The application allows UPMC to present clinicians with a comprehensive view of key patient data, including allergies, medications, lab results, problems and physician notes, without replacing existing information systems. It also allows data to be transferred and organized. For instance, if a patient’s records show allergies to penicillin under a variety of drug names, all of the penicillin allergies are grouped together in dbMotion’s presentation of the data.

For 11 consecutive years UPMC has been named one of the 100 Most Wired hospitals and health systems in the United States by Hospitals & Health Networks magazine and also was named among the top 10 most innovative users of technology among all companies by InformationWeek magazine.