BY HEIDI ULRICHSEN

Nearly 10 years ago, at the sunset of the last millennium, government funding was earmarked to thwart the worldwide technological mayhem that was supposed to occur because of the so-called Y2K Bug.

While the year 2000 began without any of the predicted computer failures, one of the legacies of the money handed out at the time is the North Eastern Ontario Network (NEON), a system of electronic medical records shared by 13 hospitals in the northeast.

Sudbury Regional Hospital received funding to implement electronic medical records in 1998 and chose to purchase a new system from Meditech, a Massachusetts software company serving health-care organizations around the world.

Because the software is expensive, Sudbury Regional decided to share it with other hospitals in the northeast, and split the cost.

The result is an electronic medical record system that lets doctors in Sudbury know what treatment a patient has received in Timmins, or vice-versa.

“Some of the benefits are that allergies and next of kin are automatically flagged. All of the information that was collected in Timmins is available in Sudbury when the patient arrives,” said Gaston Roy, chief information officer for Sudbury Regional Hospital and NEON.

All of the technical support for NEON, which has been up and running since 2000, is provided out of Sudbury Regional Hospital.

The most recent hospitals to join the network are Bingham Memorial Hospital in Matheson, Anson General Hospital in Iroquois Falls and Lady Minto Hospital in Cochrane.

Meditech’s software was chosen because it is tried and proven, having been installed by about 60 per cent of hospitals in Ontario and 40 per cent of hospitals in Canada, said Roy.

The electronic patient record system can track health treatments, and store reports on patients’ bloodwork and the drugs they’re receiving. Besides medical information, the system also houses hospital financial records.

NEON is also integrated with the Picture Archiving and Communication System (PACS), which captures and stores medical images like x-rays, ultrasounds, magnetic resonance imaging and computerized tomography (CT) scans, said Roy.

Generally, though, PACS images are transmitted throughout the northeast on two dedicated networks, Northern Ontario Radiology (NORad), which serves hospitals in the Timmins region, and the North East Health Shared Alliance (NEHSA), which performs the same function in the Sudbury region.

Roy said he’d love to expand the services NEON can provide. For example, Meditech has an advanced module that allows nurses to scan a barcode on patients’ wristbands to ensure they’re taking the right medications. Unfortunately, funding for information technology is hard to come by in the health-care system, he said.

“The first priority is always supplies like wheelchairs and drugs. It’s very difficult to put money in IT and say we’re not going to put it into ongoing day-to-day operations.”

“When you look at the budget of a hospital, they’ll spend anywhere from two to 2.5 per cent on information technology. It’s very difficult. Where do you get the funding?”

Despite tight finances, Roy is confident that NEON is just hitting its stride. The province wants patients to have access to their own health information on the Internet by 2015, and funding may be flowing his way in the near future.

“The province is coming out with some strong short-term strategies. They really are pushing for patients to have access to their own record. I think they’re even suggesting that the entire province would have that level of service by 2015. They’re going to start putting a lot of money into eHealth.”

www.neonetwork.ca