HEALTH have just spent £12.4m on a new computer system which they say will improve patient care.
The department awarded contracts last week for the technology which will take 18 months to get fully up and running. It is designed to provide vital information on the diagnoses and drug regimes of hospital patients, as well as images (such as X-rays) and tests results.
Each year 40,000 people are seen in Accident and Emergency while 13,000 in-patients and 120,000 out-patients are treated annually. Funding for the system was agreed by the States in 2006.
Health chief officer Mike Pollard said: ‘I liken the system to air traffic controllers needing radar. They need to know where their planes are all the time even though they are spread over a large area.’
He added that the system would mean that staff would not have to hunt manually through thousands of files for information about patients. A statement released by Health said: ‘Modern computer systems are the best way to manage such important information in huge quantities.’
