Extensia provides two products, RecordPoint and Extensia Patient Referral Exchange (EPRX). These are tools to assist co-ordinated health care at the community level. RecordConnect provides the integration between RecordPoint, the EPRX and the local clinical systems.

RecordPoint

RecordPoint is a proven Shared Electronic Health Record that links all clinical systems, hospital settings, care plan tools and any other sources of information available. It provides a secure means of sharing critical patient data in a privacy compliant and logical structure. Its heritage began in software research (DSTC) and was built according to Australian government requirements (HealthConnect Business Requirements Specification). RecordPoint enables real time access to more comprehensive patient information and allows authorised clinicians to update the patient record at the point of care.

RecordPoint significantly improves the efficiency and quality of health care by enabling truly coordinated community care. This is particularly relevant for chronic disease communities where patients receive treatment, over extended time periods and by many, varied health care providers.

RecordPoint provides appropriate security controls and audit trail views suitable for busy clinicians needing access and for patients protecting their privacy.

RecordPoint can be integrated with existing clinical systems and provides comprehensive web-based access and functionality for quick deployment and scalability. RecordPoint can be deployed locally within communities or organisations, or optionally delivered as a fully-hosted and managed ASP service.

To understand more about how RecordConnect works and can help you, click this link to view our videos.

EPRX

The EPRX is an Electronic Patient Referral Exchange and Directory, born of frustration with the hit and miss referral process. Extensia's Clinical Lead, a practising endocrinologist, is behind the concept and design of the EPRX. Patient information is transferred seamlessly from clinical software, then the most relevant providers, services and products are presented instantly and referral documents are created automatically and sent electronically.

A significant amount of time is spent locating the right providers and services for patients. A significant amount of time is wasted with patients not arriving at their appointment with all the necessary pre-requisites. The EPRX is designed to reduce time spent and wasted in the referral process.

The EPRX is designed to locate a wide range of providers, services and products (both clinical and non-clinical) that are the most appropriate and convenient for providing care to a patient. Many of whom would be otherwise unknown. Once selected, the EPRX assists the referrer to ensure all the referral criteria are met. The EPRX also provides the patient with all the information they need to arrive on time with all the necessary pre-requisites and documentation. EPRX improves the quality of the referral process end-to-end in addition to saving valuable time and money.

RecordConnect

Extensia understand that even the most compelling solutions must pass the usability test to gain clinician acceptance. For Extensia's products, this means seamless, 'one-click' integration with the local clinical system in use. RecordConnect is a standarised approach to integrating applications to the vast array of local clinical systems.

It has been designed with plug-in adapters that can be developed by 3rd parties, including the vendors of the local clinical systems. Each adapter supports one of the local clinical systems. The list currently includes MD2 and MD3, practiX, statHealth, Best Practice and will shortly include Genie and Communicare.

Once a plug-in adapter has been developed, it can be used by RecordConnect and other 3rd party applications to connect the local clinical system with a vast array of systems and applications, including, shared EHRs, directories, referral tools, best practice guidelines, registries, research databases, and targeted care programs. This eliminates clinicians spending time retyping data, filling out paper forms, searching for enrolment procedures or identifying programs that would be suitable for their patients.

To understand more about how RecordConnect works and can help you, click this link to view our videos.

Benefits

Together the Extensia products, integrated with the existing clinical systems, have achieved the following benefits in health care communities:

• Increased involvement of patients in their health care, reviewing their clinical record to assure quality and contributing, for example, advanced care directives.
• Increased the utilization of appropriate MBS item numbers by providers to benefit patient outcomes.
• Reduced the number of avoidable presentations and admissions to hospital and enabled appropriate at home care.
• Improved support for telemedicine allowing remote shared access to quality clinical information.
• Increased community capacity to coordinate services and reduce duplication of/and gaps in care and resources, including for non-clinical services, particularly in rural and remote settings.
• Increased use, relevance and currency of shared care plans leading to improved care co-ordination and health outcomes.
• Increased community capacity to manage patients with chronic disease
• Provided information for research to establish best practice and enabling regional level service planning.

Adapting to rapidly changing needs

It is no secret that existing clinical systems quickly become out of date. Health care is a rapidly changing environment and traditional software development approaches cannot keep pace. Experience has shown that trying to do so creates a situation where costs spiral out of control, systems become unstable and unreliable, and after all that, the clinical needs are still not met quickly enough.

Over 15 years ago this exact issue was recognised and research began on find an alternative way of developing clinical software. This resulted in the openEHR approach, which has been used as the basis for RecordPoint. The communities using RecordPoint have full control over the clinical information stored and shared and can change RecordPoint themselves at any time to keep up to date with their requirements. This highly configurable approach has been applied in key areas for both RecordPoint and the EPRX. This includes the ability to change the logic and rules in the systems to suit local requirements, for example to customise notifications sent to the care team based on nominated criteria.

Not an island

The Extensia products rely on fitting into the surrounding systems in the community. They cannot achieve transformation of health care as an island. The only way Extensia knows how to achieve integration in a scalable and sustainable way nationally is to make use of the mandated and adopted standards appropriate for the health IT environment in Australia.

Extensia continues to keep informed of progress in standards and contributes to the ongoing debate necessary to see standards achieve their objective in health software. RecordPoint and EPRX reflect this involvement and Extensia enjoys the efficient integration and secure future ensured by taking a standards approach.

The following standards are used in Extensia's products:

• National Health Identifiers
• Web Services (as recommended by NeHTA)
• SNOMED
• HL7 v2
• CEN 13606 / ISO 18308 and the openEHR approach
• Archetypes based on NeHTA Data Groups