Best of Breed: Start with Data in Open Platforms

The company will have a stand and a speaking slot at the leading industry event, and will use the opportunity to discuss the best way for trusts to make a success of the 'best of breed' approach to EPR with the UK health tech community.

Company founder and chief executive Tomaž Gornik will argue that trusts that don’t want the cost and vendor lock-in of working with a single supplier first need to move their data onto an open platform that can feed the different applications that clinicians need.

"We call it the postmodern EHR approach," he will say in the 4 March session: "Doing best of breed right: start with the data!"

"The key concepts are a standards-based, vendor-neutral clinical data repository with a strong interoperability layer and low-code toolkits that can support an ecosystem of best of breed applications. Organisations can then deploy these applications according to their resources and the needs of clinicians and patients.

"With this approach, you are able to take advantage of new technologies while keeping your systems running, and to create an app store of innovation that builds on that legacy."

Gornik will be speaking alongside Andrew Forrest, the chief information officer of Taunton and Somerset NHS Foundation Trust, which has put the Better Platform at the heart of its digital transformation.

The trust, which is the largest in Somerset and a global digital exemplar (GDE), is using a clinical portal to give staff access to advanced clinical functionality. This includes Better OPENeP for closed-loop electronic prescribing and medication management and Better Form Builder to create clinical documents.

Taunton and Somerset is also the first NHS trust to adopt Better Portal; a clinical portal for better patient management that enables healthcare organisations to support patients on a daily basis.

At Digital Health Rewired, Forrest will explain how this approach has supported new ways of working. "The ability to develop and iterate on solutions alongside frontline colleagues over days rather than months is key to ensuring optimised workflows, engaged clinical teams and improved patient outcomes," he told a recent openEHR event in London.

Better started out in 1989, when it implemented a new IT system at the University Medical Centre in Ljubljana, Slovenia. Since then, it has gone on to become a leading player in the openEHR community. Better's openEHR platform supports 22 million patients in more than 500 hospitals in 15 countries worldwide, and the company has secured a strong presence in the NHS.

Plymouth NHS Trust became the first organisation in the country to go-live with OPENeP when it went live in June last year, working in partnership with CGI, which also helped to deploy OPENeP in Taunton and Somerset.

OPENeP has also been chosen by Wye Valley NHS Trust, where it will be deployed in partnership with Epro, and Dartford and Gravesham NHS Trust, where it will be deployed in partnership with Alcidion.

"We thought it was right and appropriate to return to Digital Health Rewired for the second time," Gornik said. "In the past year, we have delivered major openEHR projects across Europe and in the NHS and seen Better Portal awarded a prestigious Red Dot in recognition of the excellence of its design.

"We look forward to outlining our latest developments to the UK health tech community, and to discussing how they can support the NHS as it moves into the new, open era."

About Better

However, we don't believe that we should do this alone. That is why we fully embrace the open culture and the international openEHR approach. This is enabling health technology companies that share our ethos and direction to create a collaborative ecosystem that fully meets the rapidly evolving needs of healthcare organisations, clinicians and patients.

About Better at Digital Health Rewired

Better will also be exhibiting and explaining more about OPENeP and Pathfinder at Taunton and Somerset from stand E28, in the north east corner of the show at Olympia London.