August 15, 2014 — TeraMedica announced the completion of its Evercore Vendor Neutral Archive (VNA) installation for the public health system in New South Wales (NSW), Australia, supporting one of the largest health imaging exchanges (HIEs) worldwide. The technology plays a key role in enabling sharing of medical images and complete digital medical records across numerous local government health districts with 110 clinical facilities serving a patient population of more than 7,000,000. The project will result in improved patient care based on timelier and complete information, elimination of repeat exams and reduced costs of manual data sharing. Implemented by government agency HealthShare NSW, the multi-phased project was launched in late 2010 with numerous sites going live since February 2012.
All facilities participating in the HIE continue to use their own major clinical IT applications, including picture archive and communications systems (PACS), radiology information system (RIS) and electronic medical records (EMR), and maintain their distinctive clinical and business practices. TeraMedica's innovative storage architecture provides interoperability among data from disparate applications with shared formatting and centralized archiving. It enables direct image sharing from PACS-to-PACS and RIS-to-RIS. In addition to DICOM data, it also manages and distributes MPEG, JPEG and PDF and other standard image files in their native formats, along with treatment plans and reports.
All facilities participating in the HIE utilize existing patient identifiers, with a comprehensive statewide patient registry reconciling and managing varied patient information across sites. Every facility in this large-scale deployment stores its imaging and all cross-department clinical data in centralized patient folders in the TeraMedica Evercore VNA.
"We believe the HealthShare NSW project serves as a showcase for the power and benefits of the VNA and a patient-centered imaging record," says Jim Prekop, TeraMedica CEO. "The entire installation serves as a model for sharing patient information across enterprise and technology boundaries efficiently and cost-effectively. We applaud the forward-thinking public health system in Australia for their efforts in implementing the leading edge project and are proud to have contributed to its success."
The system connects nine different PACS vendor solutions processing over 3,000,000 imaging procedures annually in an area as large as the state of Texas. When it receives an imaging order, the HealthShare NSW system automatically searches in real time for all previous studies and results associated with the patient across all participating facilities. It also automatically inserts a link into a patient's electronic medical record (EMR), providing quick access to lightweight, compressed images and reports at the point of care.
Eventually, TeraMedica's Evercore VNA will provide a gateway to the national government's master patient index to reconcile all patient identifiers and support complete integrated electronic medical records across the entire country of Australia.
The state-wide image repository, powered by the Evercore VNA, was recognized last December with the New South Wales' Premier's Award for Public Service. The project was selected for superiority in the Public Sector category for Improving Performance and Accountability. The Award encourages continual improvement of services and systems to promote more effective use of vendor resources as well as adoption of excellent business and management practices.
For more information: www.teramedica.com
April 03, 2024 
