iSOFT to provide EMR for Royal Flying Doctor Service Sydney –...

iSOFT to provide EMR for Royal Flying Doctor Service

Sydney – Monday, 30 June 2008 –IBA Health Group Limited- (ASX: IBA) today announced a contract with the Royal Flying Doctor Service of Australia (RFDS) for an iSOFT Electronic Medical Record (EMR) for people who live in and travel to some of the country’s most remote regions.

Worth $2.7 million, the contract is for a licence to use iSOFT’s software, implementation services, customisation, and support and maintenance for five years. The project starts in July and is due for completion in June 2009.

Under the e-Health for Remote Australia (eHRA) project, iSOFT will create an electronic clinical platform enabling the introduction of an EMR for patients of the four RFDS Operating Sections across Australia.

Based on iSOFT’s internet based primary care solution, the broadband EMR will be central to improving health service delivery and health outcomes for patients and well as improving the communication and transfer of health information between different providers and auxiliary services.

The solution will give RFDS health professionals access to essential health information for each primary care appointment, telehealth consultation with potential to link to aero-medical retrievals. The EMR will include patient demographics, medical history, allergy, immunisation, and current medications and enable
the planning and scheduling of clinics, consultations and other services in remote Australia, including rural support towns, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, remote stations/properties, mining towns and tourist resorts.

RFDS Clinicians will have access to health records at clinics and hospitals, at home (especially after hours when providing telehealth services), from the RFDS base, in the car traveling to and from facilities and eventually in the aircraft through wireless broadband capabilities.
RFDS National CEO, Nigel Milan, said: “The broadband EMR, believed to be the world’s first accessible from remote locations, would greatly enhance the already high level of patient care delivered by the Service’s health professionals”.

“Unlike city-based GPs, who have ready access to their patients’ records in their surgery, our health
professionals conduct consultations at numerous locations, many of them remote.”

“The RFDS EMR will allow them to access a patient’s medical history remotely while attending patients at
different locations and update that history as they examine and treat each patient," concluded Mr Milan.

iSOFT already has vast experience of providing primary care solutions on this scale and complexity. A prime example is the Independent Practitioner Network and its network of 100 clinics and multi-disciplinary medical practices throughout Australia.

Gary Cohen, IBA’s executive chairman and CEO, said: “Our healthcare division iSOFT, has a strong track record of delivering innovative, scalable software applications, we are able to provide a solution that meets the specific needs of the RFDS with particular focus on its mobile and remote requirements. The solution will act as a catalyst for change and through improved processes and increased efficiencies will provide direct benefits across the RFDS sections. iSOFT excels as the only provider of a fully integrated and networked primary care business solution in the Asia Pacific marketplace.”