OntarioMD Approval – OSCAR + Integrator Data Sharing

Today, the OSCAR community received the official approval from OntarioMD for the OSCAR + Integrator distributed data sharing solution. The OSCAR + Integrator solution is now fully OMD funding eligible for distributed health care teams (Configuration 1 Data Sharing).

The clear benefit of this solution is the allowance for the total EMR autonomy of each clinic, while still being able to share information electronically throughout a large group.

This certification is a very big deal.

Finally, large and small distributed health care teams have a real choice for their EMR solution. You are no longer required to support everyone in your organization via a single centralized location; each clinic can manage their own independent EMR, and the Integrator automatically and transparently handles the distribution of appropriate information from one clinic to another.

With the Integrator, each individual clinic, in conjunction with its patients, can decide how much clinical information to share throughout the larger circle of care. Extensive security and user control allows you to safely and efficiently share your entire chart, a few key components of it, or none of it at all.

For example, in a Family Heath Organization with 35 doctors spread across 20 clinics, each clinic could run an independent OSCAR EMR server (1 x EMR solution per clinic), whilst the group would deploy a single Integrator to facilitate the sharing of relevant patient information amongst the entire group (1 x Integrator solution per organization).

The OSCAR community has much to be proud of in the attainment of this certification. Our engineers leveraged the excellent work of the OSCAR and CAISI projects to deliver an exceptionally usable solution, bringing together the very best of both projects in support of large health organizations.

OSCAR on the iPad - Your Patients Thank You

Get out your iPad. Log into OSCAR. Write a prescription. Sign it electronically with your finger. Fax it from your office to the patient's favourite pharmacy.



Welcome to your new EMR.

Schedule + Caseload Management, Together at Last

Getting to your charts as quickly and efficiently as possible is what we all want, but we don't all work the same way.

Even within a single practice, your daily workflow may change over the course of the week. You may find that some days, your workload is driven by an appointment schedule, while other days, it is driven by rounds at the hospital, extended care facility, or with several house calls.

The ability to support different workflow models has long been embedded within the OSCAR and CAISI systems, but in the past you've always had to make the choice - schedule vs caseload workflow management.

Now, as a result of an extensive integration effort, you can have both workflows enabled at the same time.

So on Monday, you can visit St. Mungo's...



... Tuesday to Friday, you meet your scheduled patients in your office...



... and Saturday, you can make your rounds in the Nebuchadnezzar...



Of course, you may decide that the caseload manager isn't just for rounds, but may be useful for tracking and grouping specific patients that may be of particular interest to you. Perhaps they are part of a clinical trial, being managed by a resident, or are recently recovering from a procedure.

You know your patients the best. OSCAR gives you the tools to care for them more efficiently.

Distributing Data – A Better Sharing Model for OSCAR

The Integrator is the CAISI designed, multi site, ethical, data sharing engine, developed and deployed as part of the joint efforts of Seaton House, St. Michael’s Hospital, and the City of Toronto.

The Integrator provides a mechanism to share when appropriate, information contained within your EMR to affiliated sites, without the need for your entire group to be hosted off the same centralized hardware. Each site maintains an independent and autonomous EMR within its own clinic, and users still benefit from the opportunity to securely see and share records amongst a larger, geographically distributed, circle of care.

This distributed model of data sharing tends to be more robust than the centralized approach, due to its inherent redundancy, and lack of any single points of failure.

Recently, a significant amount of work has been expended to extend the capabilities of the Integrator such that it could work seamlessly and natively with OSCAR based clinics. This work has further integrated the CAISI and OSCAR solutions, such that it is easy to dynamically move between scheduled and caseload based workflows for your practice.

Now, users of OSCAR, can extend their reach to a much larger circle of care, whilst maintaining their independence and autonomy within their specific clinic.

The Integrator gives you a data sharing model that is easily and granularly configured on a per clinic basis.

Integrator’s ethical consent to data sharing is very easy to manage, as it gives the patient the option to opt in and out data sharing amongst facilities, on an as needed basis. It also gives the participating clinic an appropriate level of audit trail for these consents.

OSCAR, enhanced with CAISI caseload management and augmented with Integrator data sharing is truly an exceptional platform. It is no wonder why OSCAR is now on everyone’s shortlist when they are choosing a new EMR.