CareGroup overhauls medication delivery processes

Software Magazine, Spring, 2002 by Lisa Zschuschen

The healthcare industry is one place where technology plays a crucial role in saving lives. One of the most important features of any program must be an ability to simplify or otherwise help doctors in the practice of treating patients. CareGroup, a network of physicians and hospitals throughout New England, chose Cache Intersystems to help with its goal of providing the best patient care possible. CareGroup's integrated delivery system comprises 3,000 doctors, 12,000 employees, six hospitals, and one million patients.

When Dr. John Halamka became CIO of CareGroup he recognized the need for an overhaul of the prescription writing system. He began looking for solutions two years ago that focused on the clinical IT systems that would most enhance patient care. "It's a longstanding issue in American medicine that we do not have appropriate IT systems to manage all medication delivery processes," says Halamka.

The Physicians' Order Entry (POE) system, developed by Cache Intersystems, Cambridge, Mass., is a Web-based system designed to reduce the amount of medical error, which Halamka says is a substantial improvement in medical technology because it forces healthcare providers to admit error.

Cache is a post-relational database with a multidimensional data and application server offering ultrafast and massively scalable objects and SGL. Cache offers rapid development technology for building objects and object applications.

The POE system works via a seamless data connection built into the Cache database. It presents doctors with medically acceptable drug options for their patients' condition. Orders are cross-checked for drug interactions, duplicate orders, or patient allergies. Lab results are displayed and an order is received into the system. The prescription is then sent directly to the pharmacy where the labels are generated. The POE system is wireless-ready and is accessible through wireless laptops and handhelds as well as from a physician's home PC.

"Seven out of 10 patients get a wrong medication when they are hospitalized in America today," says Halamka, citing last year's Institute of Medicine Report. "With Physicians' Order Entry System, you eliminate all that."

With more than 10% of the nation's economy coming from healthcare, the IT industry knows it must pay attention. The trend of technology in healthcare is becoming more commonplace because software companies tend to offer very specialized programs, all of which improve medicine in a specific way. CareGroup decided on Cache for several reasons, notably its ability to transmit large data volumes (21 Terabytes per minute) across networks, the ease with which it is supported, and its affordability. In addition, says Halamka, there was "almost no learning curve, everything is on the Web," so doctors did not have trouble learning how to use it.