Prof Chia Boon Lock receives the SMA Honorary ... - nuhcs

SPOTLIGHT
Information Technology
@ The Heart Institute
Dr James Yip & Ms Fauziah Azizi, Cardiac Dept @ NUH
Within the ‘heart’ of operations at the The Heart Institute runs a
unique software that has been storing critical information of our
patients since 1991. This database, the cardiology information
system (CIS) was initially spawned by Professor Maurice Choo,
when he was then chief of the cardiac department in NUH. It was
initially a report generator for our echocardiography, treadmill
and ambulatory blood pressure investigations and networked on a
series of Macintosh computers. In 1998, the system was revamped
to include research data and a new engine which helped
cardiologists track their cases. In 2000, the system was moved to a
Windows platform and the system was exported to Alexandra
Hospital for use. It also boasted of a hospital interface which allowed
its reports to be seen in NUH’s Hospital information system. We
also developed an expert system for our percutaneous interventions
which allowed full text reports to be generated from data captured
during a procedure. We expanded our repertoire of investigations
in the system to include 35 unique cardiology investigations ranging
from Nuclear, CT angiography, Cardio-pulmonary exercise,
Electrophysiology, congenital heart and vascular interventions.
In 2001, we bravely entered the world of real time digital
imaging. We began storing all images from echocardiography,
cardiac catheterization, electrocardiograms and nuclear. One of
our overriding principles, was that all ‘raw’ source data from any
system had to be stored and shared with everyone. In 2003, this
database was installed in Tan Tock Seng Hospital and a National
Heathcare Group (NHG) cardiology network was established. Our
cardiology reports became available to the whole cluster in 2005
on the computerized patient record system (CPRS). In 2003, we
won a grant from The Enterprise Challenge from the Prime
Minister’s office and we became the first medical unit in Singapore
to use tablet personal computers for our daily ward rounds. This
allowed all cardiology reports and images to be disseminated to
the patients bedside. This improved our overall efficiency and
allowed patients to have a shorter length of stay for our inpatients.
In 2004, our CIS won the prestigious National Infocomm Awards
from the Infocomm Development Authority (IDA) for the best
implementation of IT in a public institution. In 2005, our IT
director, Dr James Yip was inducted into the IT Hall of Fame of
the Singapore Computing Society for the Friend of IT award.
On a daily basis, the CIS allows our cardiologists to review
patient information on a timely basis and to complete their
cardiology reports. It has the capacity, for our doctors to work
from home and to store interesting cases for teaching and research.
The CIS contains coded fields which allows directed research to
be conducted by our cardiologists and data to be collected
prospectively. Thanks to this database, our research output each
year grows by leaps and bounds, and doctors are able to submit
numerous abstracts for local and overseas meetings, with some
our young researchers frequently clinching young investigator
awards. Part of the success of our CIS system, is that it is self
developed and self managed. It is an organism which continually
evolves to meet the new challenges, which is what expensive
proprietary systems cannot promise to deliver. In the future
development of the CIS, we hope to increase its connectivity
to other systems and to deliver clinical decision support for
the cardiologists.
THI PULSE | 6